The city's plans do not call for new construction to replace the church wall after demolition. A number of medieval and 17th-century houses will be bulldozed for that purpose. Bangs and other preservationists say the Vrouwekerk ruins can be improved with benches and landscaping. Bangs would like to see the foundation of the inner choir wall exposed at ground level and the space covered with stone floor slabs to indicate that the ruin was once a church. In the center, he suggests a bronze plaque or a three-dimensional model of the church as it looked during Pilgrim days.
Bangs brings considerable expertise to the project.
He was previously chief curator of the Plymouth Plantation, a re-creation of the Pilgrim colony in Plymouth, Mass., and is one of the world's leading experts on Pilgrim history. Not only is the Vrouwekerk sacred to the descendants of the Pilgrims, but is also the church from which some of New York City's first families immigrated in 1622. Huguenot refugees fled in large numbers from France to the Netherlands during periods of anti-Protestant persecution in the 16th and 17th centuries. Linnean Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. 20008. The United Church of Christ, with national offices in Cleveland, has some 6,000 local congregations in the United States and Puerto Rico.