Update:
Saint Saviour's Church to be Moved to Safety!

St. Saviour's Saved!

The Daily News
BY DONALD BERTRAND
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, April 2nd 2008, 4:00 AM

Preservationists have reached an agreement to move St. Saviour Church from the 1 1/2-acre lot where it now stands.

"I have somebody who wants to buy the property and I need to give it clean," said Tomer Dafna of Maspeth Development LLC, which owns the property bounded by 58th St., 57th Road, Rust St. and 57th Drive.

A church group also is interested in the lot, but it also wants it minus the church, Dafna said.

Robert Holden, president of the Juniper Park Civic Association, was among those who persuaded Dafna to save the historic church from demolition.

At a news conference Monday, Holden said he is meeting with building movers to determine the feasibility of hauling the church and its tower a few blocks down Rust St. to a site owned by Phil Galasso, president of the Maspeth Industrial Development Corp.

Another plan would be to take the church apart for reassembly. In either case, it would go to the Rust St. site for safekeeping.

"The good news is that St. Saviour's will be saved and that is the key," Holden said.

Plans call for its final destination to be at All Faiths Cemetery in Middle Village.

"The location will be ideal for the church. We hope we can accomplish this in three to four months," said Dan Austin, president and CEO of the cemetery.

Christabel Gough of the Society for Architecture of the City said St. Saviour was designed by Richard Upjohn, who is also the architect of Trinity Church in lower Manhattan.

"He [Upjohn] built this little wooden church for the people of Maspeth and he published a book on how to build small wooden churches" that enabled others to build similar churches, Gough said.

Paul Graziano, president of the Historic Districts Council, hailed the preservation campaign as "the heart [and] soul of grass-roots preservation efforts in New York."

Tom Vitale, 48, who has lived across the street from the church since 1967, said he was happy the church will be preserved.

"We would like to save the property [also], but that is not going to happen. As long as the church is going to be saved, we are happy," Vitale said.

The trees, a parsonage and a meeting hall were recently leveled. Only the church remains on the otherwise cleared property.

dbertrand@nydailynews.com

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For a Church Bathed in History: A Last-Minute Miracle

The New York Times
April 6, 2008
Maspeth

By JAMES ANGELOS
FOR the past few weeks, a large excavator with tanklike wheels has stood a few ominous feet from St. Saviour’s, an old Gothic-style church atop a small hill in Maspeth, Queens. At 11 a.m. on March 24, the machine was just hours from turning the rickety structure, built in 1847 for the Episcopal Church, to rubble.

But St. Saviour’s got a stay of execution, thanks to a last-minute agreement between the developer of the property and Robert Holden, president of the Juniper Park Civic Association. The church was designed by Richard Upjohn, the architect who designed Trinity Church in Manhattan.

“Saint Saviour’s Church will be saved,” Mr. Holden announced last Monday at a news conference outside the church. Mr. Holden, whose group represents local residents, said the developer had given him about a month to move the church from the property. The plan is to restore the building and relocate it to All Faiths Cemetery in nearby Middle Village.

The church, in a neighborhood dotted with warehouses and aluminum-sided homes, has become a symbol of what many residents feel is Queens’s often-neglected history. But for a single lamppost, there are no designated landmarks in Maspeth, a sore subject for some residents. Those trying to preserve the church are dismayed that the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, which reviewed the church on three occasions, never took action toward designating the building. The church was damaged by fire in 1970, and Lisi de Bourbon, a spokeswoman for the commission, said the commission had determined that “the original fabric of the complex was too altered.”

After the fire, the original building was covered in a layer of unremarkable white vinyl siding. But Mr. Holden and other preservationists insisted that a rare jewel lay underneath.

Maspeth Development LLC, the firm that bought the 1.5-acre church property for $7.5 million in 2005, had intended to demolish the church, but its plans were obstructed by a lawsuit and at times bitter protests by local residents. A compromise proposal to build 27 three-family homes around the church fell through.

Shortly after the church was saved from a deathblow, its vinyl siding was removed to reveal the redwood building Mr. Upjohn had created — a rare example of what is known as Carpenter Gothic, according to Mr. Holden. The original bell tower and southernmost wall are missing because of the fire, but the rest of the early building appears largely intact.

Mr. Holden, a tall, gray-haired 56-year-old who sees history where others see mundane warehouses and homes, toured the muddy grounds of St. Saviour’s on a recent rainy afternoon. Remnants of the church’s interior lay in a heap. Mr. Holden pointed his umbrella at areas of historical interest beyond the church grounds, among them the home owned by James Maurice, a 19th-century congressman, now covered with white aluminum siding and sprouting a few television satellites. Past a lumberyard across the street from the church, he pointed toward what he said was a Colonial burial ground turned into a parking lot. “There’s no respect for the history here,” he said, adding, “Queens is so disrespected.”