Church Missions House

Church Missions House is at 281 Park Avenue South in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The rectangular land lot is on the southeast corner of 22nd Street and Park Avenue South, covering approximately . The lot has a frontage of on 22nd Street to the north and on Park Avenue to the west. and is directly across from the United Charities Building to the north and 300 Park Avenue South to the northwest. Other nearby buildings include Gramercy Park Hotel to the southeast, the Russell Sage Foundation Building to the east, 121 East 22nd to the northeast, and Madison Square Park Tower and 304 Park Avenue South to the northwest. Many of the surrounding buildings are commercial loft structures similar in design to Church Missions House. The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Xavier Society for the Blind, United Cerebral Palsy of New York City, and the Russell Sage Foundation were among the groups headquartered in Charity Row. When Church Missions House was built, the United Charities Building, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), and the Bank for Savings were all being developed on nearby sites. ==Architecture==

The six-story building was designed by Robert W. Gibson and Edward J. Neville Stent for the Episcopal Church's Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society. The extent to which either man was involved in the project is unclear, but Gibson was known as an architect of Episcopal churches in New York state during the 1890s, while Stent specialized in interior designs of churches around the same time. The design was inspired by the town halls of Haarlem and Medieval Amsterdam. Facade The facade is made of granite at the ground story and Indiana Limestone on the other stories. The facade's composition is based on the arrangement of the superstructure, which is arranged as a grid of rectangles. At each corner of the building is a tourelle that extends the height of the building. The rest of the facade is subdivided by vertical columns, which separate the facade into bays of openings, and horizontal spandrels, which separate windows on each story. According to the AIA Guide to New York City, the Medieval-inspired facade was "equal to buildings of the Flemish and Dutch Renaissance." The spandrels at the top corners of the arch are decorated with icons inspired by 16th-century motifs. Church Missions House has several features that were used in the early skyscrapers of New York City during the late 19th century. The building has a self-supporting steel superstructure filled with brick, by two years. The ground floor has a cafe and a gift shop. The storefronts facing the streets were initially rented to publishers of religious media. The space has a ceiling The restaurant incorporates some of the historic stained-glass windows that were previously mounted on the facade. The space also contains a mural by Dean Barger, brass chandeliers, wood doorways and floors, and mohair chairs. == History ==

The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society had been founded in Philadelphia in 1821. The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society moved to New York City in 1835. The Foreign Committee took space at 115 Franklin Street in lower Manhattan, while the Domestic Committee was housed nearby at White and Center Streets. The Episcopal Church sought to combine the offices of the two committees as early as 1836. and the committees both had several headquarters during the next decade and a half. By 1853, it had opened offices at the Bible House, where it remained for four decades. The effort stalled again through the 1880s. and visited the headquarters of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in London three years later. Upon his return to the United States, he wrote to the Society's Board of Managers that a church missions headquarters was needed. In October 1888, a bishop, two presbyters, and six laymen were appointed to a committee to select the site and raise money through subscriptions. By May 1889, the committee had identified a site near Fourth (now Park) Avenue and 22nd Street. The site was selected because it was on a major avenue; it was near 23rd Street, where a crosstown streetcar line operated; it was next to Calvary Church, a major Episcopal church; and Madison Square and Gramercy parks were both nearby. Church architect Robert W. Gibson was asked to review the plans. The winning plan was likely Stent's entry, published in the journal Spirit of Missions in December 1889. Stent's design was narrower than what was ultimately built, but the general design was almost the same. The Society sought to raise $200,000 for the building's construction through subscription. Over half of the total amount, $110,000, was raised by March 1890. The subscription was completed with two $50,000 donations from the Edson family that May. The Board decided to approve the project in October 1891. Afterward, Stent's plans were revised, allowing for the construction of a larger structure on the site. The firm of Robinson & Wallace did not start constructing the building until that December. Episcopal use The building originally had an Episcopal Church bookstore on the ground floor. Office space was rented to the American Church Missionary Society, the American Church Building Fund, the Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, the Church Temperance Society, the Church Periodical Club, and the Brotherhood of Saint Andrew. Church Missions House started hosting the annual House of Bishops upon its completion. Church Missions House also hosted meetings of the city's Episcopal clergy, as well as elections of bishops. In 1898, a memorial altar was dedicated in Church Missions House's chapel in memory of W. S. Langford, who had long been a secretary for the Board of Missions. Four years later, Dean Hoffman willed $50,000 to the Board of Missions for real-estate investment. The money reportedly could have paid for an additional three or four stories, but these were not built. The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society celebrated its centennial at Church Missions House in 1921. The Episcopal Church's National Council was headquartered in the building by 1925. That year, it was tasked with studying the feasibility of relocating the Episcopal offices from Church Missions House to Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. It was around this time that the Episcopal Church nationally faced a deficit. In 1926, the council authorized the church's finance department to sell Church Missions House. The building was valued at $400,000, though it was not sold at the time. The church continued to experience financial difficulties through the 1930s. The National Council first invited women to its meetings at Church Missions House in 1935 after a ban on female council members was rescinded. Episcopalians across the United States nicknamed Church Missions House "281", for its address number, whenever they talked about the Episcopal headquarters in the building. Relocation of the offices to D.C. was again proposed in October 1940. James E. Freeman, bishop of D.C., said at the time that he had been advocating for such a change since 1925. The Episcopal Church remained at Church Missions House. In 1947, it purchased the Herbert L. Satterlee estate in Greenwich, Connecticut, for a lodging center and presiding bishop's residence, though the Episcopal offices continued to be in Church Missions House. The presiding bishops of the Episcopal Church (including Arthur C. Lichtenberger from 1958) had their offices at Church Missions House and lived at the bishop's residence in Greenwich. Ultimately, in 1960, the Episcopal Church bought property on Second Avenue and 43rd Street. The church planned a new office building on that site to combine its offices at Church Missions House, the Greenwich estate, and a third structure at 317 East 23rd Street. By then, the church had long outgrown Church Missions House, and it had rejected several alternative office sites, including the then-new Interchurch Center in Morningside Heights, Manhattan. FPWA use In February 1963, the Episcopal Church moved to its new offices at 815 Second Avenue. George C. Textor, the president of the Marine Midland Trust Company, held a fundraising drive to cover the cost of purchase and renovation. As part of the project, the exterior was cleaned, the original interior details were restored, and the building was upgraded with modern elevators and mechanical systems. Church Missions House reopened in December 1963 as the FPWA's first permanent headquarters; the organization had previously occupied rented space. At that time, the Municipal Art Society and The New York Community Trust had already designated the building as a landmark. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated Church Missions House as a city landmark on September 11, 1979. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 3, 1982. Church Missions House lies immediately outside the Gramercy Park Historic District, though a neighborhood group has proposed adding the building to the district. While the district was extended in 1988, the building was not part of the extension. Church Missions House was restored in the early 1990s by the firm of Kapell & Kastow. The architects created rental space for other non-profit organizations on two floors and the Laura Parsons Pratt Conference Center on the ground floor. J.P. Morgan & Co. provided a letter of credit to the FPWA for the restoration. The building was sold that July for approximately $50 million. The Real Deal magazine initially reported that the Garzoni family of Italy was the buyer, but it subsequently reported that Aby Rosen of RFR Realty was the true buyer. Rosen was acquiring several other structures across Manhattan at the time, saying that his firm was seeking "properties that are unique, with beautiful architecture". With the sale, the FPWA decided to move to the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. The joint venture of RFR Holding and HQ Capital Real Estate LP finalized their purchase in January 2015. The building was to be converted to condominiums, with shops on the ground floor and an office lobby on 22nd Street. The LPC approved the plans in March 2015. The building's varying ceiling heights and relatively small floor plates also made the building unwieldy for office use. By August 2015, RFR was looking to lease the building to a single tenant instead of converting it to office use. The same year, Jan Broman, cofounder of Swedish photography museum Fotografiska, decided to lease the building after his wife had pointed it out during a taxicab ride. Broman was looking to expand the museum to New York City, and he contacted the building's leasing agent the day after his taxicab ride. Several statues of naked men were displayed in the building's storefronts in 2016. In 2017, Fotografiska leased the entire building from RFR. The transaction included an adjacent chapel, which would be connected to a restaurant in the building. CetraRuddy was hired to redesign the interior for the museum, while Roman and Williams was hired to design a second-story restaurant space with a bar. Fotografiska New York opened in December 2019. The same month, RFR bought out its partner's stake in the building for $56 million. The building's popularity increased in the early 2020s after Netflix released Inventing Anna, a drama miniseries about Sorokin. however, a change in the building's ownership would not affect Fotografiska's lease. In May 2024, Fotografiska announced it would relocate that September and that the restaurant and Chapel Bar would close in June 2024. That month, RFR placed the building for sale once again, with an asking price of $125 million. ==See also==