PLATTSBURGH — The Plattsburgh United Methodist Church was chosen as the recipient of services for a pilot program: Preserving Sacred Heritage: Expanding Opportunities for Sacred Sites as Community Pillars.
“With this inaugural Preserving Sacred Heritage project award, AARCH looks forward to unlocking additional funding opportunities for Plattsburgh United Methodist Church, including the New York Landmarks Conservancy’s Sacred Sites Program and the New York State Environmental Protection Fund’s Historic Preservation grants,” said Erin Tobin, AARCH’s executive director.
Adirondack Architectural Heritage will complete a National Register of Historic Places nomination for the church, which was built in 1957 and designed by regional architect, William Prescott. The church displays characteristic features of Prescott’s Mid-century Modern designs, including gently sloped roofs, large overhangs, wide chimneys, mixed material siding, and large expanses of glass.
Currently, the building’s monumental stained-glass windows need to be repaired, and new protective glazing. The church also provides numerous community services, including a food shelf, community concerts, and sharing its space with other congregations, according to a press release.
“AARCH received a grant from the Adirondack Community Foundation for a pilot of a new program called preserving Sacred Heritage,” Tobin said. “We actually got the idea from colleagues in Buffalo, who created a somewhat similar program to research and write National Register nominations for congregations in historic buildings.”
The Keeseville-based historic preservation organization conducted initial outreach to faith communities when working on the grant application for the Adirondack Community Foundation to assess the need for such a program. Plattsburgh UMC was one of the churches contacted.
“When we were awarded the funds, we were awarded funds to do one nomination, so we sent out a call for applications and publicized that,” Tobin said. “Plattsburgh United Methodist Church was one of several who applied. Upon review, they best met our criteria. At the top of the criteria was that it had to be eligible for the National Register or need a need a National Register nomination.”
The recipient also had to have a need for a capital building project or restoration.
“Which would kind of help prioritize them to us because the idea of this program is to open up and unlock eligibility for certain types of grants that are only available to National Register listed congregations for restoration. So, that was the second criteria,” Tobin said. “Then the third, we also looked at their service to the public because this is not just about the architectural significance of the buildings that house these faith communities, but also what they do and how they serve their community outside of the congregation and the importance of these congregations to their community in providing different types of services. and part of that is, say you have a church in a building that needs a lot of repair, the congregation could choose to leave that church and move to a different place or combine with another congregation, and that would leave a neighborhood unserved.
“We’ve seen that with congregational closures in certain communities. That’s one of the points of how all these things are interconnected. Needless to say, Plattsburgh met all of those criteria in spades.”
The Preserving Sacred Heritage program is funded by a grant from the Adirondack Foundation’s Generous Acts Fund.