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Council Once Again Tables Resolution to Make St. John's a Landmark
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The Jersey City Municipal Council has yet to take action with respect to the designation of St. John's Episcopal Church and Rectory as a historic landmark. At its meeting of October 22, the Council tabled a resolution originally presented, at tabled, at a public hearing on October 7. The Council is to hold a special meeting in November on whether to grant St. John's status as a historic landmark. The postponement of the meeting, which is to occur in the newly renovated City Council Chambers, will also allow the city's engineering department to make assessment regarding the structural stability of the church's infrastructure.
St. John's Episcopal Church and Rectory was designed by John Remsen Overdonk II and constructed in 1870. Situated in the Bergen Hill neighborhood, the church originally catered to an affluent congregation and became known as the "Millionaire's Church." As the neighborhood demographics changed in the 1960's, so did the mission of St. John's, which served a largely minority working class population until the congregation was disbanded in the late 1990's.
Designation of the Church as a historic landmark would prevent its owners, the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, from carrying out plans for its demolition. One alternative to demoliton that has been proposed is adaptive reuse. At a Council meeting in early October, the Diocese proposed entering into a joint housing venture with the Jersey City Episcopal Community Development Corporation. However, those plans would not preserve the church in its entirety, only leaving in tact its vestibule and entrance.
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