The First Presbyterian Church of Newtown is a historic Presbyterian church in the Elmhurst neighborhood of Queens in New York City. The church complex is composed of the main church, a parish hall, and a manse. The current complex at 54th Avenue, between Seabury Street and Queens Boulevard, is the fifth church complex built for the congregation.
The congregation was founded in 1652 and was originally housed in a building that it shared with other congregations. In 1669, the town of Newtown (later Elmhurst) erected a new building for the churches. The congregation became part of the Presbyterian Church in 1715 and built a structure that was demolished during the American Revolutionary War. A second building, called the Old White Church, was erected in 1791 and remained standing until 1928. The congregation moved to its current building when it was completed in 1895. The manse was built in 1907. Both the church building and manse were moved in 1924 when Queens Boulevard was widened, and the parish hall was built in 1931.
The current church building is a Late Gothic Revival style, granite and brownstone church with a steep slate gable roof. It features three large pointed arched windows and an square bell tower. The parish hall is a Collegiate Gothic-style brick building with a slate roof. The manse is a -story frame residence. The church complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.
History Initial buildings (c. 1652–1715) Elmhurst was established in 1652 as the town of Middleburgh, an outpost of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. The town's leaders had intended it to be a religiously diverse settlement. Soon after Middleburgh's establishment, a town building was erected to serve as both a community and religious building; it was on what is now Dongan Street near Broadway. Use of this building was shared by various religious denominations: the Church of England, the Dutch Reformed Church, the Presbyterians, and the Quakers. After the English gained control of New Amsterdam in 1665, they renamed Middleburgh to "Newtown"; subsequently, Newtown became part of Queens County in 1683.
In 1669, the town planned to build a new church for all of these denominations on a "small gore of land" near Grand Avenue and Queens Boulevard, donated by Ralph Hunt, a prominent citizen of the town. According to the town records, the new building was to cost forty pounds, half in corn and half in cattle. The building was enlarged by contractors John Coe and Content Titus in 1694. The next year, Newtown purchased a house and from Samuel Coe for use as a parsonage.
The Church of England became the Province of New York's official religion after the passage of the Ministry Act of 1693. As a consequence of the act, the parish of Jamaica was extended to cover the towns of Flushing and Newtown. Subsequently, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) became responsible for appointing the parish's Anglican rectors, who generally served multiple congregations at the time. During the same period, New York's provincial governor, Lord Cornbury, refused to let any pastor preach in the province if they dissented from the Church of England. However, after he was recalled in 1708, the Presbyterian congregation was allowed to choose its own new pastor, the Rev. Samuel Pumroy, who lived in the church farm parsonage.
Separate building (1715–1776) On September 15, 1715, the congregation applied for membership in the Presbyterian Church. The congregation was admitted to the Presbytery of Philadelphia, and at the time, had eight members in full communion. In 1717, the congregation united with others in Jamaica and Setauket to form the Long Island Presbytery.
Jonathan Fish, a parishioner, had deeded land near the present church site to the "dissenting Presbyterian congregation of Newtown" so the congregation could replace its dilapidated church building. The congregation received title to the land in March 1716. A church building was erected, though it was not completed until 1741; it had a spire with a bell suspended at the top.
At the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1775, most of Newtown's inhabitants were Loyalists who sided with the British. The Presbyterian Church of Newtown, like many other American Presbyterian congregations of the time, were Patriots who sympathized with American independence. The church created a "Committee of Correspondence" to communicate with the Continental Congress. A copy of the United States Declaration of Independence was read on the church steps in 1776, some days after independence was declared on July 4. Following the Battle of Long Island in August 1776, Newtown was occupied by the British, and public worship at the church was suspended. Several young Loyalists sawed off the church's steeple in the middle of the night. The British removed the pews and converted the church building into a jail. To insult the Presbyterians, the British left the pulpit in the street as a horse-hitching post. They subsequently destroyed the entire church building and reused the wood to build huts for their soldiers. Records show that some of the timber was sold for $250.
Old White Church (1791–1928)
Only five of the original congregants remained in Newtown after the war; the others had been captured or killed, or had fled Newtown. The Reformed Church of Newtown let the Presbyterians use their building for the time being.
The First Presbyterian Church of Newtown was legally incorporated in 1784. A new church building was erected under the ministry of the Rev. Peter Fish, who became stated supply pastor in 1785. The cornerstone was laid in 1787, and the new church was dedicated in 1791. At this time, a bell made by Gerit Bakker was placed in the belfry. This building, later called the Old White Church, was a two-story white-painted wood frame building on the north side of Hoffman Boulevard (present-day Queens Boulevard). A manse was built in 1821, and an adjacent plot of land for the church's cemetery was donated the next year. The church building itself was enlarged in 1836. Further renovations were undertaken during the ministry of the Rev. John P. Knox (1855–1882). This remodeling involved replacing the square-back pews and the windows.
This building continued to be occupied by the congregation until 1895. At that time, the congregation moved to its current building, and the old building became a Sunday school. An annex to the Old White Church was built in 1909. The cemetery continued to accept burials until 1906. The Old White Church's manse was relocated to 53rd Avenue and Seabury Street, a block northwest of the current church, apparently in the mid-1920s. The Old White Church burned in 1928 when the belfry caught fire, presumably following a lightning strike.
Current church (1895–present)
Construction and early years John Goldsmith Payntar, a wealthy merchant from Newtown and a member of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, died in August 1891. In his will, he left $65,000 for the construction of a new church building. Payntar stipulated that the building be "an exact copy" of Cherry Valley's Presbyterian Church in Cherry Valley, which Payntar had "greatly admired". Of his bequest, $35,000 was reserved for construction, of which some $4,000 was spent on the spire, $5,000 on the fence, and various other expenses for furnishings. Another $5,000 of Payntar's bequest was dedicated to general upkeep of the church yard. Additional funds were used to construct a stained glass window in Payntar's memory. A monument to Payntar and his family was also erected in the church yard. Frank A. Collins designed the new church while Hopkins & Roberts were the contractors. Construction started on the building in July 1893, and it was dedicated in May 1895. The new structure was built on the south side of Hoffman Boulevard, across the street from the old one. The congregation erected another building east of the bell tower, which was used by the Christian Endeavor organization as a meeting hall. The pastor at the time, the Rev. Jacob Mallmann, resigned five months afterward as a result of a dispute over the maintenance of the new church building.
During the late 1890s, Newtown was renamed Elmhurst and became part of the City of Greater New York. Elmhurst started being developed as a commercial and residential neighborhood. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that the congregation grew by 104 members from 1896 to its 250th anniversary in 1902. The church's trustees agreed to build a new manse in 1905, and it was completed by 1907. The church paid Collins $200, likely in conjunction with designing the manse, which ultimately cost $5,000.
Relocation and later history
Queens Boulevard was developed in the early 20th century, incorporating the former Hoffman Boulevard and connecting Elmhurst to the Queensboro Bridge to Manhattan. The city government formed a commission in 1912 to expropriate land and compensate property owners. In the First Presbyterian Church of Newtown's case, the city offered to either buy and raze the church building or pay the congregation $35,000 for relocation; the congregation chose the latter.
The agreement was made in 1917, but no action was taken until 1922. Walter Kidde and Company were hired to move the church on rollers at a cost of $87,000. Beginning in February 1924 and continuing until late that year, the current church was moved south. The 1907 manse was also relocated to Seabury Street and 54th Avenue, behind the church building. The steeple was taken down and the stones stored for later reassembly, though this never happened. The Christian Endeavor building was demolished because the congregation hoped to build a larger social hall.
In 1930, the church's chapel was condemned for the construction of the Independent Subway System's Queens Boulevard Line, whose Grand Avenue–Newtown station contained an entrance directly outside the church. The church hired Meyer & Mathieu to design a new parish house, which was built by Charles R. Krieg Inc. in 1931 at a cost of $75,000. The city was to compensate the church for the acquisition, but the compensation was delayed. Instead, the church paid for the parish house by taking out a $60,000 mortgage in 1930; the mortgage was paid off five years later when the city compensated the church. At the time, it was the church's only debt in its 283-year history, and the church celebrated by burning the mortgage papers. Commercial developers offered the church a $1,000,000 offer for its building in 1951, but the offer was rejected. The following year, U.S. president Harry S. Truman sent a message to the church for its 300th anniversary.
The old church cemetery's land was sold in 1958; the corpses were disinterred and moved to the Cemetery of the Evergreens. By the early 1980s, Elmhurst was becoming increasingly populated by immigrants, and the First Presbyterian Church of Newtown had parishioners who had immigrated from 40 countries. Despite this, the church's then-pastor, the Rev. Charles Sorg, continued to conduct services entirely in English, saying that this would unite immigrants with a single language and "enable people to accommodate themselves into the American scene". To celebrate the church's 350th anniversary in 2003, the congregation planted two trees of Newtown Pippins, a type of apple that had first been grown in a nearby orchard in the 17th or 18th century. The church was deemed eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 2012, and was listed on the NRHP the next year.
Architecture