Apostolic Faith Mission (former Orthodox Friends Meeting House)

265 Lafayette Avenue | also 343 Washington Avenue | Clinton Hill | built 1868

Open on the map4 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1865

    January 24

    Architect Stephen Carpenter Earle writes a Quaker committee member about a plain Brooklyn meeting house

    Stephen Carpenter Earle, a Quaker-born architect living in Brooklyn, sent a letter dated January 24, 1865, to Christy Davis, who sat on the committee for building the meeting house, setting out his plans for a Brooklyn Friends meeting house. He said he aimed for something modestly comely and with no ornamentation. The Landmarks Preservation Commission says these specifications seem to agree with the present building and thinks it likely that Earle was its architect.

    “…it seems likely that Stephen Carpenter Earle was the architect of the Lafayette Avenue Meeting House. ... There is no ornamentation about it…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1867

    April

    Brooklyn's Orthodox Quakers vote to build their own meeting house at Washington and Lafayette Avenues

    By the 1860s some Orthodox Friends in Brooklyn were making four- and five-hour journeys to the Gramercy Park meeting house in Manhattan. After starting a $200 annual fund in 1860 for a Brooklyn meeting, the Brooklyn Orthodox Meeting resolved in April 1867 to build its own at this corner. Its minutes called for room for 400 people, a youth gallery for 70, and rooms for a Sunday school and meetings, at a cost of no more than $25,000.

    “In April of 1867 the Brooklyn Orthodox Meeting decided to build its own meeting house at the corner of Washington and Lafayette Avenues.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1902

    George Tremaine Morse updates the Friends meeting house with quatrefoil panels, a new cornice and a rose window

    In 1902 the architect George Tremaine Morse, who had designed Grace Reformed Church in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens in 1893, gave the Early Romanesque Revival meeting house more up-to-date detailing. He changed the windows, added stone label moldings and stone panels with Gothic quatrefoil ornament on the front, put on a new stone cornice, and formed a rose window from a double window. The Landmarks Preservation Commission says the building still follows its original style.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  4. 1965

    The former Quaker meeting house is sold to the Apostolic Faith Mission

    A record shows that the Friends passed the property to Emmanuel Baptist Church in 1901, yet the Quakers kept using it until after 1955, when Brooklyn's two meetings reunited. In 1965 the building was sold to the Apostolic Faith Mission, which the Clinton Hill Historic District report names as its present owner.

    “In 1965 the Church was sold to the Apostolic Faith Mission, the present owners…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Further reading

Nearby

All 13 buildings with stories in Clinton Hill