The Conservancy’s Sacred Sites Committee awarded $256,000 in matching grants to 22 historic religious institutions yesterday. These ranged from an 1833 stone Gothic-revival structure in Peru, New York, to an 1898 church on Central Park West to an 1898 synagogue in Binghamton. The $256,000 in total grants and will help leverage $3.1 million in repair and restoration projects throughout New York State.
VIEW SLIDESHOW OF ALL GRANTEES
Four sites in New York City received grants totaling $85,000. Old Broadway Synagogue received a $5,000 award to address structural damage to floor joists. Architects Meisner and Uffner designed this 1923 buff-brick tenement-style synagogue which remains as the last active Jewish congregation in West Harlem. The Fourth Universalist Society on Central Park West will complete a slate-roof installation with the assistance of a $40,000 Sacred Sites matching grant. The church, by architect William A. Potter, was completed in 1898 and reaches 3,100 people a year through numerous community activities. The Cathedral of St. John the Divine will restore its inoperable bronze entrance doors with the help of a $10,000 Sacred Sites Grant. The largest cathedral in the world, St. John the Divine was designed by architects Heins & LaFarge and Cram & Ferguson. In Brooklyn, Stuyvesant Heights Christian Church in the recently extended Crown Heights Historic District is a Gothic-revival red-brick building by architect George Hawthorne. A $30,000 matching grant will assist with the restoration of a monumental stained-glass window and the wood tracery.
This grant round illustrated the statewide reach of our program. Grantee sites outside of the city stretch from East Hampton, where the First Presbyterian Church will complete a conditions survey with a $2,500 matching grant, to Peru in the Adirondack North Country of Clinton County. Peru Community Church, a stone, Gothic-revival structure built by local mason Robert York in 1833, received an award of $5,000 to assist with steeple repairs and masonry restoration. The committee awarded Temple Concord of Binghamton a grant of $8,000 for architectural services to guide masonry restoration at the congregation’s 1898 Kilmer Mansion by architect C. Edward Vosbury.
In Albion in Western New York, Christ Episcopal Church, a Gothic-revival style red-brick church from 1833 with a community kitchen serving 1200 individuals annually received a $3,000 matching grant to help complete a stained-glass restoration project.
The Sacred Sites Program has two grant rounds annually. Our next application deadline is June 1st, with those grants awarded in early October. Active historic religious institutions located in New York State are eligible to apply. For more information contact the Conservancy at 212-995-5260.