Bedford Park Congregational Church
2988 Bainbridge Avenue | Bedford Park | built 1891
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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.
- 1889
Rev. Shearjashub Bourne gathers seven people for Bedford Park's first Congregational service
The American Home Missionary Society sent Rev. Shearjashub Bourne, a Yale graduate born in 1822, to the young suburb in 1889. After walking the town and posting a notice in the railroad station, he led a service on September 29 in Mrs. Daniel Gugisperg's parlor attended by seven people, founding the congregation that built this church.
- 1890
The new congregation files to incorporate and raises money, drawing a bell from Harlem's Pilgrim Church
After groundbreaking on November 22, 1890, the church filed incorporation papers in December and began raising money. Bourne tapped his former Harlem flock at Pilgrim Church, which donated a bell inscribed with the Liberty Bell's motto, while State Senator William Watson Niles, the first trustees president, gave cash and a large stained-glass window for the Sunday school.
- 1892
The church designed by the founding minister's son, Edgar K. Bourne, is dedicated
The cornerstone went down on February 21, 1891, and in June the pastor's son, Edgar K. Bourne, filed plans for a stone-and-shingle church estimated at $6,000. Construction ran from July 1891 to March 1892, and the church was dedicated on April 26, 1892.
- 1953
Rev. William Kalaidjian takes over a 55-member church facing closure and revives it
When Rev. William G. Kalaidjian became minister in 1953, the church had just fifty-five members and closing was being discussed. He opened it to many civic groups, had the old stained glass releaded and a Gethsemane window installed over the altar, and by 1989 membership was about 200. He retired in 1996.
- 2000
The city designates the fieldstone-and-shingle church a landmark
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the church on June 20, 2000, calling it a rare surviving small rustic suburban church of the late 1800s in New York City. It pairs rough fieldstone walls and squat buttresses with a shingled Richardsonian Romanesque tower and a timber-framed Queen Anne porch.
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