The Old First Reformed Church in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

– officially known as The Reformed Dutch Church of the Town of Breukelen – is a historic Dutch Reformed

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Chris ...

at 126 7th Avenue on the corner of Carroll Street in the Park Slope neighborhood of

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

New York, New York New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Uni ...

. The congregation was founded in 1654 by decree of Governor

Pieter Stuyvesant Peter Stuyvesant (; in Dutch also ''Pieter'' and ''Petrus'' Stuyvesant, ; 1610 – August 1672)Mooney, James E. "Stuyvesant, Peter" in p.1256 was a Dutch colonial officer who served as the last Dutch director-general of the colony of New Net ...

, as one of three "collegiate churches." The current church building was constructed in 1888–1893 p.657 and is a

Late Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

style Indiana

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

building on a

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

base. It measures 100 feet wide and 162 feet deep. The front facade features a 212-foot-high stone tower and

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires are ...

. ''See also:'' The church was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1998.

References

Notes

External links

Old First Reformed Church websiteHistory of the First Reformed Protestant Dutch church of Breuckelen: now known as the First Reformed church of Brooklyn, 1654 to 1896 (Google eBook)
(1896) Churches in Brooklyn Dutch-American culture in New York City Former Dutch Reformed churches in New York (state) Properties of religious function on the National Register of Historic Places in Brooklyn Gothic Revival church buildings in New York City Churches completed in 1891 {{Brooklyn-church-stub