Although Brooklyn, New York, is now known as the “borough of churches,” Old First was the only church there for over a century. Gov. Peter Stuyvesant originally established the congregation as the Reformed Dutch Church of the Town of Breukelen in 1654. As membership dwindled following the Civil War, the congregation relocated to the developing neighborhood of Park Slope. In 1888, it commissioned notable architect George L. Morse to design a new church in the Neo-Gothic style. Branded as “Old First,” the building attracted new congregants. Old First contains stained-glass windows by three great American stained-glass artists—Louis Comfort Tiffany, William Willet, and Otto Heinigke—and maintains the tallest steeple in Brooklyn.

Today, the congregation hosts 600 to 800 people weekly for programs that include a nursery school, the Brooklyn Community Chorus, Dancewave, Bella Voce Singers, Girl Scouts, White Bird Productions, and Brooklyn Community Board 6. More than 4,000 people attend literary readings, concerts, and other events hosted at the church annually. The congregation’s most impactful program is its Summer Respite Shelter, which provides a meal and a bed for more than a dozen men throughout the summer season.

A National Fund grant of $250,000 with $800,000 in matching funds raised by the congregation allowed Old First to upgrade the outdated and potentially unsafe electrical system and to carefully restore the massive brass and hand-tooled copper historic light fixtures in the sanctuary. As a result of this work, the congregation feels “renewed” and has a “tremendous sense of new energy in the space and an excitement…to take on what’s next” in regard to preserving the building and fostering additional community relationships. The congregation notes that the building “is a core aspect of our mission statement in a way it was not before.”

Old First Reformed Church courtesy National Trust for Historic Preservation