Bay Ridge United Methodist Church/Flickr
Preservationists fear that the end may be coming for the Bay Ridge United Methodist Church at Ovington and 4th Avenues. This week the church erected protective screening and began the process of exhuming the remains of 211 former parishioners from an underground crypt at the church site.
The fate of the church has been up in the air as the dwindling congregation made plans to sell the church site to a Brooklyn developer who would construct a 50-unit condo on the site as well as a smaller new church space. Many long-time residents and preservationists have decried the redevelopment plan and have fought for alternatives to keep the over 100-year-old ‘green church’ from being destroyed.
Over at Bay Ridge Journal we get a first hand account of the exhumation, “As I turned onto Fourth Avenue from 72nd Street, I saw a bulldozer in full rut, running down the shrubs in front of the Sunday school in its frenzy to get at the dead.” The removal of the remains, which will be transferred to a cemetery in Cypress Hills, Queens, clearly indicates that the church is moving ahead with its plans to demolish the church building, even as concerned residents work to find another buyer who would keep the structure intact.
This isn’t the first time the the deceased will have their slumber disturbed. The remains were interred in their current site in 1901, after being removed from Grace Methodist Church at 6th Avenue and 67th Street in Bay Ridge to accommodate road expansion plans. Before the 1901 re-internment, the remains had been moved twice before. This trip to Cypress Hills will be the fourth relocation.
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