Here is a discussions of whether to preserve an important church building in Queens, New York:

Classis Hudson, the regional governing body of the CRCNA, will vote on Tuesday on whether to authorize an interim committee to figure out the future of the congregation. The Queens church officially has only 27 members, according to the denomination’s website, and no full-time CRC pastor. The church’s founder, Paul C. H. Szto, led the church until he died in 2019 at the age of 95…

The Queens church raised its own funds to build a church building next door in 1968. It is believed to be among the first—if not the very first—Chinese congregation to build its own church building in the US. With the church building in place, and a new wave of Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants pouring into the country, the Queens CRC became a waystation for Chinese American Christians and a center for Reformed thought in the Chinese American community…

Pastor Szto, who had studied under the Dutch Calvinist philosopher Cornelius Van Til at Westminster Theological Seminary and under Christian existentialist Paul Tillich at Union Theological Seminary, turned the space into a lecture hall, seminar room, and theological library with more than 18,000 books. According to The Banner, an official CRCNA publication, Szto and his wife housed and hosted more than 2,000 students, immigrants, and refugees in his home…

Mary Szto would like to see the parsonage become a museum and cultural center to carry on that legacy and tell the story of her father’s life’s work and the history of Chinese American Christianity in New York City. She notes that Chinese American church history tracks closely with real estate laws and business ownership restrictions that limited where Chinese families could buy property until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

At this point, it sounds like the fate of the building is still under conversation among particular involved actors. Not all congregations last forever and making decisions about what to do with their buildings can be difficult.

More broadly, there are many church buildings in the United States that are no longer used by a congregation. Some older structures find new life as a home for a different congregation and others are converted to new uses. In places where there is demand for land, such as in New York City, the end of a religious congregation may present an opportunity for a new owner to raze the building and construct something else. Some argue more religious buildings should be preserved as they are important parts of community life.

Additionally, Queens is an important site for religious activity, particularly in the post-1965 era when immigrants arrived in the community in larger numbers. For more, see the work of historian R. Scott Hanson on religious pluralism in Flushing, Queens.

I am struck in this case by the relatively recent construction of the church building. Historic preservation conversations about churches can often consider much older structures. This building is just over 50 years old but it is also socially significant. The church building in an alternative form – museum and cultural center – could serve as a reminder of the efforts of the religious congregation that once gathered there as well as its impacts.