An outpost of New York City’s oldest church is calling it quits.
Fort Washington Collegiate Church, one of four sites belonging to a Dutch Reformed congregation dating back to 1628, will close its Washington Heights location on West 181st Street at the end of June.
The move, which potentially frees up a major nonlandmarked parcel for real estate development at a time when old-line religious institutions across the city are shedding buildings, is being blamed on longstanding financial challenges faced by the 100-member congregation.
“The Collegiate Church consistory determined that the ministry and worshipping life of Fort Washington Collegiate Church is no longer sustainable,” the church said in a statement. “We ask for your grace and compassion not only for each other, but also for our board as we mourn and begin navigating this next chapter together.”
But the site’s managing director, the Rev. Stan Sloan, subsequently told Crain’s that the church did not entirely rule out redevelopment for the more-than-half-acre-sized corner property at the busy intersection at Fort Washington Avenue.
“Collegiate Church will keep ownership of the campus,” said Sloan. “We do not yet know how the property will be used, but we will seek a use that continues to serve the community.”
The move to close, which came after a vote by the church’s 10-member council April 7, follows a few troubled years for the parent organization, which is known as Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church.
In 2020 a massive blaze totaled another of the church’s sites, Middle Collegiate on Second Avenue in the East Village, forcing a five-year, nearly $11 million rebuilding campaign, though church leaders say that donations and insurance proceeds covered the bulk of the cost. The new site, which is inside a structure at 50 E. Seventh St. that was owned by the destroyed church but survived the fire, opened over Easter weekend last month.
The church also failed to develop an office tower behind its oldest property, Marble Collegiate on Fifth Avenue in NoMad, that would have graced it with a new community center, a $27 million payout and an estimated $40 million stake in the tower. But its development partner in the joint venture, HFZ Capital Group, went bankrupt during the pandemic, and in 2021 lender Vanbarton Group foreclosed on the property. A state court judge the next year put a halt to an effort by other investors to sue the church, though it still had to surrender the site.
At the Washington Heights site, the church spent $10 million starting in 2013 on a three-year project to build a glass-walled addition inspired by Midtown’s Apple store. At the same time, many of the community groups that use the property for meetings and events, a list that has included child care groups, synagogues and drug counseling services through the years, did not pay rent or fees for the space, according to a source familiar with the arrangements who asked to remain anonymous.
In 2021 Fort Washington Collegiate had revenues of about $856,000 on expenses of $801,000, according to its annual report for that fiscal year, the most recent available on its website. Church leaders began meeting to discuss the institution’s financial health around that time, they have said.
If Fort Washington does enter into a real estate partnership akin to its Fifth Avenue counterpart, residential developers, among others, might take interest. The site, whose main structure is a Gothic-style sanctuary from 1909, seems notably underbuilt relative to its surroundings, and a large lawn takes up about half its lot. But middle-class Washington Heights may not command the same level of residential rents as other neighborhoods awash in church-to-housing conversions, like Brownstone Brooklyn or the East Village.
Though the Dutch Reformed church may be the city’s oldest congregation, it may be less well known than another similarly-aged group with matching real estate aspirations, Trinity Church, the FiDi institution that owns much of the land in the Hudson Square neighborhood. Trinity was chartered in 1697.
Fort Washington Collegiate will hold its last Sunday service June 29.
