New York's historic houses of worship are under attack, with a dozen slated to be demolished this year.While neighborhoods battle the trend, which has its roots in soaring maintenance costs and declining church attendance, preservationists say they have no way of knowing that a house of worship is endangered until the scaffolding rises or a public dispute erupts. Most do not have landmark status.
DUE TO EX-SPIRE
12 comments:
Maybe if we didn't price churchgoing people out of this city and invite sin-loving "urban professionals" in, we'd have more of our cultural landscape left. Allelujah, almighty dollar!
So the Landmarks Conservancy thinks St. Saviour's dates from 1857? Try 1847. Maybe the Post should have cited someone who's actually cares about the church...
It seems as if our church leadership, like our cultural and political leadership, is just going through the motions.
They just don't care and the public senses it.
This city remains deeply religious: the organizations that own these properties (or should I say were given these properties by devout members) can easily sell these properties to other groups, evengelicals, penticostals, Jehovah Witness, Seventh Day Adventists, etc that would drool at the opportunity.
But, after turning off their congregations with out of date tired liberal theology (umm, sounds like the clubhouse, doesn't it?) they elect to sell to maintain bloated payrolls rather than the missions they were set up to do.
Yet another example of how the Sacred Sites program run by the MAS is not doing anything useful.
We need a generational change in the preservation leadership of our city.
The "preservation" community at large....
composed of its various "hysterical societies"etc.
continue to sit idly by praying
for an 11th hour miracle to save the day.
Minions of these "qualified" idiots
sit among dusty archives
attending to their "precious" artifacts.....
nurturing their pet projects....
when they should be out there actively
fighting in the streets (if need be)
to save the fabric of NYC's treasured past!
The sheep bleat out their frantic cries
while the savvy wolf continues feasting
on the flock.
The "developer" knows that if he can deftly
run a blade through the rib cage into the very heart of faith itself and kill it off.....hope will be destroyed and replaced with obedience.
The remaining winnowed flock will follow.....
begging for mercy while they kneel in homage
to their new shepherds.....
NYC's political/real estate industry!
C'mon.....show some backbone
you lazy, fearful "preservationists"
before you wind up being lamb chops on a plate.......
and the buildings you might have saved
will be the accompanying veggies !
I'm ashamed of you all !
What to know where the houses of worship are going? It seeems like all of the one- and two-family homes are churches in Johnny Loo's Flu shing. Just check the tax rolls!
Religion is not disappearing. Take a drive around Southeastern Queens-it has megachurches rivaling those in the South and West. Mike Huckabee would feel right at home campigning in these churches.
In Far Rockaway, Kew Garden Hills, and Forest Hills, new synagogues are being built. In northern Queens, Asian churches are growing. So are gurdwaras and mosques.
These new houses of worship may not have the Gothic and Romanesque charm of their predecessors, but the emotion and devotion is still present.
Which is why these properties should be adaptively reused by said congregations and not torn down for more condos.
Maybe if the Catholic Archdiocese didn't have so many lawsuits against sex offender priests they would have the money to keep these churches open.
Most of the churches scheduled for demo are not Catholic.
"Most of the churches scheduled for demo are not Catholic."
Sorry, I didn't add the other religions that have sex offender clergy...
Russell
In the Holly Civic Ass'ns area.....
well over 40 plus "churches"
(tax dodges?) have proliferated.
Reverend Moon was quite a
pioneering entrepreneur in the religion business
(remember his "Unification Church".....
or should it be more properly called
"The Unification Real Estate company)?
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