The tall white wooden church on Bushwick Avenue near Himrod Street has stood since before the Civil War. On Friday afternoon, on Juneteenth, it burned.
The 911 call came in at 1:22 p.m. By the time the smoke cleared, a three-alarm fire had consumed the steeple of the South Bushwick Reformed Church, taken most of the roof, and gutted the top half of the building at 855 Bushwick Avenue, according to the Brooklyn Paper. Nearly 200 firefighters and EMS workers rushed to the scene, CBS New York reported, and video showed the steeple folding into the flames. The blaze jumped to the rectory next door and a neighboring building. One firefighter was hurt, refused medical attention, and kept working. No one was inside. The cause is still under investigation.
Longtime residents are gutted because the congregation had just spent years saving that exact steeple. After Hurricane Isaias damaged it in 2020, parishioners and preservationists raised money and finished the repair about six years ago, Brownstoner reported. Council Member Sandy Nurse told NY1 her office had spent “over the past four years to make sure that this church can survive for another 100 years.” They won that fight. Then Friday took the whole building.
What burned cannot be replaced. The congregation was organized in 1851 by members of a Reformed Dutch church whose roots in the area reach back to 1654. According to the National Fund for Sacred Places, the original South Bushwick congregation was made up of 20 families from neighboring farms. The white clapboard building, with its two giant fluted columns out front, was finished in 1853 in the Greek Revival style. The city made it an official landmark in 1968, and it is one of only eight landmarked wooden houses of worship left in all five boroughs.
Attorney General Letitia James came to the scene and tied the loss to the day. “On this day, as we think about freedom, this historic church has fallen,” she said, per CBS New York. “But as we know in our faith, church is more than a structure.” The church’s pastor, the Rev. Dr. James Steward II, said the same: “While the building has been damaged, the church is more than bricks and mortar. The people of South Bushwick Church remain strong in faith and united in purpose.”
Because the church is a designated landmark, it qualifies for restoration grants and historic-preservation money an ordinary building would never see, which is how the steeple got rebuilt the first time. Nurse’s office, which has worked on the building for four years, is likely where any official recovery effort will come from. For now the block is still cordoned off, the neighbors who were briefly kept out of their own homes are back, and a congregation that has outlasted the Civil War, two world wars and a hurricane is figuring out what comes next.
If you want to help, do not fire off money to a random link yet. Watch the church’s own channels and Council Member Sandy Nurse’s office for the verified recovery fund, and follow Bushwick Daily for updates. And if you have old photos of that steeple, dig them out. The neighborhood is going to want them.
