Church of the Transfiguration

29 Mott Street | also 23 Mott Street | Chinatown | built 1915

Open on the map4 entries

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

1. 1801

   Zion English Lutheran Church builds a Georgian church on Mott Street

   This Georgian-style church was built in 1801 for the Zion English Lutheran Church, a congregation that later became the Zion Protestant Episcopal Church. After a major fire in 1815 the building was reconstructed. It was designated a New York City landmark in 1966 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

   Source: Wikipedia

2. 1818

   November 16

   The church is rebuilt after a fire that gutted it and burned 35 homes

   A fire that swept the neighborhood on August 31, 1815 destroyed 35 nearby dwellings and gutted the young Zion church, leaving rector Ralph Williston so financially ruined that he resigned two years later. Merchant Peter Lorillard helped organize the rebuilding, securing parishioner donations and a loan from Trinity Church. Bishop John Henry Hobart dedicated the reconstructed church on November 16, 1818.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

3. 1853

   The Catholic parish of the Transfiguration moves into the Mott Street church

   In 1853 the Episcopal congregation sold the building to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, which moved the Transfiguration parish here from Chambers Street. The parish dated to 1827, when the priest Félix Varela bought a former Episcopal church on Ann Street. It went on to serve Irish, Italian and then Chinese immigrants, and today it holds Sunday Masses in English, Cantonese and Mandarin.

   Source: Wikipedia

4. 1868

   Architect Henry Engelbert adds the octagonal bell tower

   In 1868 architect Henry Engelbert redesigned the church's exterior, adding an octagonal, copper-clad bell tower and Gothic-style window tracery atop the walls built in 1801. The alterations gave the Transfiguration the silhouette it still shows Mott Street, blending the older Georgian fieldstone structure with fashionable High Victorian Gothic details. The tower remains the building's most recognizable feature.

   Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

• Church of the Transfiguration, Roman Catholic (Manhattan)Wikipedia

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