Sag Harbor’s Historical Methodist Church Needs Help
The Sag Harbor Methodist Church is up for public sale. Built in 1836, this Historic Landmark, if bought by a private party could become a single-family dwelling and close its doors to the public forever. We wish to preserve this unique building for community use.
Please sign our online petition and help save Sag Harbor’s United Methodist Church.
Click here to sign the petition.
The Sag Harbor Methodist Church in its current Madison Street location, ca. 1900, with the Italianate bell tower that blew down in the hurricane of 1938. Photograph by William Wallace Tooker. From Stephen Longmire’s “Keeping Time in Sag Harbor”.
The Methodist Church on its original High Street site (near the intersection of Franklin Street). Lithograph from the 1854 Wall & Forrest map of Sag Harbor, based on a daguerreotype by Isaac Van Scoy. From Stephen Longmire’s “Keeping Time in Sag Harbor”.
Contact & Important Links
Sag Harbor Village
55 Main Street
PO Box 660, Sag Harbor, NY 11963
631-725-0222 Fax: 631-725-0316
www.sagharborvillage.com
Mayor: Gred Ferraris
Contact: Chris Nuzzi
Southampton Town Board
Save Sag Harbor's Online Petition
History of the Church
Sag Harbor's Methodist church began its life on High Street, opposite the end of Rysam Street, where it was built in 1835-36. It looked quite different at the time: a classic Greek Revival building, sitting atop the Acropolis of Sleight's Hill--or Methodist Hill, as it was known. A square clock tower was added in 1839, sporting the first tower clock designed by Ephraim Byram, a homegrown genius who later made tower clocks for New York's City Hall and for the military academy at West Point, in his workshop beside Oakland Cemetery. The clock could be seen from the waterfront and was a key feature of the village in the busiest years of the whaling era.
But parishioners felt the church was too far from the center of the village, and in 1863-64 they moved it to its current location on Madison Street. To say they moved it is perhaps an understatement, as a comparison of images of the church in its first and second locations makes clear. The building was dismantled and rebuilt, retaining its original shape, but the clock tower was pulled forward and placed on top of an entryway that was added at the front. The new look was Italianate, again in the style of the period, with patterns in the heavy double doors designed in imitation of those on the famous baptistery in Florence. The crowning touch was a campanile, or open bell tower. It toppled in the 1938 hurricane, which also brought down the steeple of the Old Whalers' Church around the corner, dramatically altering Sag Harbor's skyline. Byram's clock, which links the two images of the building shown here, was smashed by the devastating storm. The current organ arrived in 1902; the stained glass windows in 1910.
Many Methodist churches were built on eastern Long Island during the religious revival of the mid-19th century, which had sailors taking temperance pledges. The structure has been gradually modified to fit the changing needs of an evolving community ever since. Soon it will be reinvented again. The use to which the building is put next will determine the fate of its interior, which is not protected by Sag Harbor's architectural preservation code. The church was among the local landmarks named in the village's first preservation ordinance of 1973, identifying it as a key contributing building in Sag Harbor's historic district, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. If you haven't been inside the church, this may be the time; it is open for worship Sunday mornings at 10.
