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Call it the ‘Green’ church; Salvage crews move in to sell whatever doesn’t move

By Ben Muessig
The Brooklyn Paper
Enlarge this image
The Brooklyn Paper / Allison Bosworth
Here, plywood covers up a hole left when a stained-glass window was removed for future sale.
Enlarge this image
The Brooklyn Paper / Allison Bosworth
Salvage operations are already underway at the soon-to-be-demolished “Green Church” on Fourth and Ovington avenues in Bay Ridge.

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The “Green Church” might be coming down — but it’s also going up for sale.

As the 109-year-old Bay Ridge United Methodist Church inches towards its date with the wrecking ball, parts of the serpentine-stoned building are being prepped for sale by an architectural salvage company.

On Aug. 29, a Brooklyn Paper photographer spotted workers loading relics from the church, which is on the corner of Ovington and Fourth avenues, into a van owned by the antique company Olde Good Things.

A manager at the business’ Manhattan location would not confirm what — if anything — will be preserved and sold, but an employee said there is no limit to what the Pennsylvania-based company might salvage.

“We can take anything — any architectural details, all the way down to the boards in the wall,” said Joe, who works at the company’s Los Angeles office. “It could be stained glass, it could be lighting. It could be the pews. It all depends on the building.”

Green Church Pastor Robert Emerick — who has long sought to demolish the tough-to-maintain church, sell the land on which it sits, and build a smaller, more modern and more manageable house of worship — could not be reached for comment.

Neighborhood preservationists enjoyed a brief respite from their increasingly uphill battle to save the church when they learned that a few parts of the historic building might survive.

“We’re kind of happy that at least the priceless treasures aren’t going to turn up in the Dumpster,” said Eric Rouda, a member of the Committee to Save the Bay Ridge United Methodist Church. “It’s sad that it’s going to go, but at least for a price, it will go into someone’s hands.”

And it seems that the church’s fate is quickly becoming set in stone.

The 30 Methodists who once worshipped in the verdant building now pray at the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd on the corner of 74th Street and Fourth Avenue, and wooden planks have already replaced the church’s stained glass windows.

On Sept. 2, the church filed with the Department of Buildings to demolish the house of worship outright. Last month, the agency rejected preliminary plans to build a seven-story, 72-unit apartment building and smaller church on the site. But that rejection is believed to be only temporary.

©2008 The Brooklyn Paper

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