In New York there has been a dispute over the future of an old church for some time: the religious congregation that manages it claims it does not have the money to renovate it and would like to sell it to a construction company that will make apartments out of it, but they oppose the idea by decision a group of residents of the neighborhood. Curiously, however, it is not people who attend the church, but above all celebrities who live in the area and who claim the cultural and historical value of the building.
The church in question is called West-Park Presbyterian Church and is located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on 86th Street. It was built in the eighties of the 1800s, in Romanesque style and with materials of a reddish color different from the typical shades of New York skyscrapers and buildings. It is also a place that has its own history, because between the 70s and 80s it was an important center for anti-war activists and for the rights of the LGBT+ community.
Today the church is run by a small congregation of about ten people, who claim they do not have the financial means to renovate it. In 2020, the governing body of the New York Presbyterian church created the West Park Administrative Commission, a body that supports the congregation in managing the structure and in the search for potential buyers: its president, Roger Leaf, he said al New York Times that the church is rather run down and that to restore it it would take about 50 million dollars for the reconstruction of the facade and internal areas and for the adaptation to safety standards.
The developer that wants to buy the church, Alchemy Properties, has made an offer of 33 million dollars, which the congregation running the church would like to accept. If the deal goes through, a series of luxury apartments would be built in the church’s place, and the congregation would use the proceeds to start a variety of community projects, Leaf said.
Among the celebrities who oppose this project are the actors Mark Ruffalo and Wendell Pierce, the actress Amy Schumer and the rapper Common: they are above all millionaires and millionaires who live nearby, in some cases in apartments overlooking the church, and that in recent months they have organized demonstrations, started a fundraiser and made some donations. Ruffalo donated a thousand dollars, and claims to use his visibility “to talk about people abused by a system that does not give them a voice.”
More generally, Ruffalo and the others argue that the abandonment of the church would symbolize the sale of cultural institutions to the market: «I want to preserve the history of the city. We see it devoured every day», Ruffalo always said, according to which without spaces like that «he would never have become an actor».
Ruffalo refers to the fact that various types of cultural events are also organized inside the church: together with him and the other celebrities, the Center at West Park, a non-profit organization that organizes artistic performances and other cultural events in different parts of the city. According to Ruffalo, “without these seats there is no theater in New York,” and according to Center at West Park attorney Michael Hiller, the sale of the church would make it “the next domino to fall, unless there is some kind of intervention.
Debby Hirshman, director of the Center at West Park, said some anonymous donors are willing to give the funds needed to renovate the church, even going as far as to cover the entire $50 million amount: currently the congregation that runs the church however, he said he had not received any indication in this regard, and indeed accused Ruffalo and the other celebrities of having transformed a very practical problem into a “high-profile political melodrama”, as well as using their power and visibility to put the congregation in even more difficulty.
“It’s funny that the wealthy neighbors of this church, who own multimillion-dollar apartments and have windows overlooking this space, claim they are the weak side in this dispute,” Leaf said.
The visibility of Ruffalo and the others has actually contributed to making the matter of the sale of West-Park Presbyterian Church a case: among other things, while he was at the Tribeca Film Festival, Ruffalo stopped the mayor of New York Eric Adams just to talk to him of this problem. That meeting was followed by another, in City Hall, between the city council, New York Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, who has a responsibility for housing policy and economic development, and church congregational leaders.
These meetings, as well as the declarations and protests of the celebrities involved, are among other things only the latest developments in a story that has been going on for a while. As early as 2010, the congregation was moving to sell the building, but shortly before a financial settlement was reached, the church was declared a city landmarkand “landmark for the city”, a formula that identifies buildings of cultural and historical interest for which restrictions on any modifications are envisaged, as happens in Italy with a declaration of cultural interest. Ruffalo told the New York Times who at the time “breathed a sigh of relief” for the church and its future.
The latest development in this story was last June, when the congregation that manages the church filed an application with the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the city body that manages buildings of historical and cultural interest, to remove the wording of city landmark from West-Park Presbyterian Church and thus permit the sale to Alchemy Properties. Since it was created in 1961, the Landmarks Preservation Commission has authorized such operations in only 13 cases: it is not known when it will decide on the case of West-Park Presbyterian Church, but Leaf and members of the congregation said they were optimistic.