SAMANTHA BRIX FILE PHOTO | Members of the Middle Island United Church of Christ received a $1,000 grant from the New York Landmark Conservancy for window restoration.

The congregation at Middle Island United Church of Christ is one step closer to completing its historic preservation project.

The church, which has sat on Middle Country Road since 1837, received a $1,000 grant from the New York Landmark Conservancy, Assemblyman Dan Losquadro announced last week.

“This grant will help to ensure that future generations of Long Islanders have the opportunity to worship at the Middle Island Church of Christ,” Mr. Losquadro said. “I am pleased that the church is working hard to restore the nearly 200-year-old property that serves as both a worship destination as well as an important historic landmark.”

The New York Landmark Conservancy, a nonprofit organization, issued the grant through its Sacred Sites program, which helps fund houses of worship for all denominations across the state. The Middle Island United Church of Christ’s congregation also received a $2,000 grant for restoration efforts from The Bellport-Brookhaven Historical Society last year.

An original building that stood eight feet south of the church was founded in 1767 as the First Presbyterian Church of Middletown, named after the area as it was then known. A new church was built in 1837 and named the Middle Island Presbyterian Church, serving as a place of worship until the congregation left in 1966.

Members of The Bellport-Brookhaven Historical Society have said the church was rented a number of times over the next few decades, until the current congregation purchased it in the summer of 2009.

The historic white building is a late-Federal vernacular interpretation of the Wren-Gibbs form of English church architecture, with large, multi-paneled arched windows and a steeple with Gothic arch louvered windows. It’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Buildings placed on the register must be over 100 years old and must not be renovated or changed so much they no longer resemble their original appearance.

The church’s congregation is now working to preserve and restore the building in hopes of achieving a church identical to the way it looked in 1837.

Tom Gaidry, the church’s building and grounds chairman, said the $1,000 grant will be used to install storm windows over seven large windows, a $5,600 project.

“We’re very delighted,” Mr. Gaidry said of receiving the grant. “We’re glad to get anything we can.”

He said the storm windows will have to be custom built so they don’t hide or change the church’s original windows.

The congregation will next work to restore the bell tower, which was installed in 1860 and has sustained water damage over the years, and replace the cedar siding on the church’s steeple. It will also repair smaller windows in a section at the rear of the church, added in 1935.

Mr. Gaidry said the congregation is committed tp the preservation project, as the church and the cemetery directly across the street, which was set up in the 1800s, are some of only slices of history left in the area.

“When you’re driving down Middle Country Road, all of a sudden when you come to our church, if you look both ways, it’s almost like you’ve gone back in time 150 years,” he said.

samantha@northshoresun.com

RELATED ARTICLES:

Historic Middle Island church receives grant for preservation efforts