Richman Housing Services will show its plans for a 21-story, mid-block apartment building adjacent to the West-Park Presbyterian Church on the northeast corner of 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue to the housing committee of Community Board 7 Monday at 7 PM at the Goddard Riverside Community Center at 593 Columbus Avenue.
Bill Traylor, president of Richman Housing Services, told CityRealty.com today that the project will contain 50 "affordable" rental apartments and 27 market-rate condominium apartments.
He said that the development will not involve the demolition of the church's existing tower and sanctuary space.
Franke Gottsegen Cox is the church's architect and SCLE is the architect for Richman.
A spokeswoman for Friends of West Park addressed Community Board 7 last night and said that an agreement to sell the church to Richman was made this week, adding that "there are 8 other churches in a 10-block radius" of West-Park that possibly face demolition.
At the same meeting, Tom Vitullo-Martin, a member of Community Board 7, said that the church was "carved out" of a historic district and that a community group had offered it $4 million but was told "it needed more." He said that "it's not a good idea to set low-income housing against historic buildings."
At one point, the Related Companies planned to redevelop the site with a 23-story tower with new quarters for the church at the corner but when some neighbors and community leaders learned that the existing church would be razed they formed a group called Friends of West-Park, which commissioned Peter Samton, a partner in Gruzen Samton Architects, and Page Ayres Cowley Architects, to come up with an alternate scheme that preserved much of the church structure.
In his superb book, "From Abyssinian to Zion, A Guide to Manhattan's Houses of Worship," David W. Dunlap wrote that "one of the finest Romanesque sanctuaries in Manhattan, West-Park Presbyterian Church is a landmark in every sense but the official one." The building is not an official city landmark.
The first sanctuary of the West Presbyterian Church or Carmine Street Church was built in 1831 and designed by Town & Davis and that church moved in 1862 to a Victorian Gothic Church at 31 West 42nd Street, according to Mr. Dunlap.
The Park Church was founded in 1854 as the Eighty-Fourth Street Presbyterian Church in a wood-frame structure on West End Avenue designed by Leopold Eidlitz and that church moved in 1884 to 86th Street and in 1890 moved into the "rugged and ruddy main church in 1890 at 539 Amsterdam Avenue" designed by Henry F. Kilburn, according to Mr. Dunlap's research.
"It is marked on the skyline by a corner tower with bell-shaped roof so vigorous that it stands in confident counterpoint to even the enormous Belnord apartment block across the avenue," Mr. Dunlap observed, adding that the two churches merged in 1911.
Bill Traylor, president of Richman Housing Services, told CityRealty.com today that the project will contain 50 "affordable" rental apartments and 27 market-rate condominium apartments.
He said that the development will not involve the demolition of the church's existing tower and sanctuary space.
Franke Gottsegen Cox is the church's architect and SCLE is the architect for Richman.
A spokeswoman for Friends of West Park addressed Community Board 7 last night and said that an agreement to sell the church to Richman was made this week, adding that "there are 8 other churches in a 10-block radius" of West-Park that possibly face demolition.
At the same meeting, Tom Vitullo-Martin, a member of Community Board 7, said that the church was "carved out" of a historic district and that a community group had offered it $4 million but was told "it needed more." He said that "it's not a good idea to set low-income housing against historic buildings."
At one point, the Related Companies planned to redevelop the site with a 23-story tower with new quarters for the church at the corner but when some neighbors and community leaders learned that the existing church would be razed they formed a group called Friends of West-Park, which commissioned Peter Samton, a partner in Gruzen Samton Architects, and Page Ayres Cowley Architects, to come up with an alternate scheme that preserved much of the church structure.
In his superb book, "From Abyssinian to Zion, A Guide to Manhattan's Houses of Worship," David W. Dunlap wrote that "one of the finest Romanesque sanctuaries in Manhattan, West-Park Presbyterian Church is a landmark in every sense but the official one." The building is not an official city landmark.
The first sanctuary of the West Presbyterian Church or Carmine Street Church was built in 1831 and designed by Town & Davis and that church moved in 1862 to a Victorian Gothic Church at 31 West 42nd Street, according to Mr. Dunlap.
The Park Church was founded in 1854 as the Eighty-Fourth Street Presbyterian Church in a wood-frame structure on West End Avenue designed by Leopold Eidlitz and that church moved in 1884 to 86th Street and in 1890 moved into the "rugged and ruddy main church in 1890 at 539 Amsterdam Avenue" designed by Henry F. Kilburn, according to Mr. Dunlap's research.
"It is marked on the skyline by a corner tower with bell-shaped roof so vigorous that it stands in confident counterpoint to even the enormous Belnord apartment block across the avenue," Mr. Dunlap observed, adding that the two churches merged in 1911.
Architecture Critic
Carter Horsley
Since 1997, Carter B. Horsley has been the editorial director of CityRealty. He began his journalistic career at The New York Times in 1961 where he spent 26 years as a reporter specializing in real estate & architectural news. In 1987, he became the architecture critic and real estate editor of The New York Post.
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