page_title: First Presbyterian Church of Newtown
section_title: Relocation and later history
hierarchical_section_title: First Presbyterian Church of Newtown / History / Current church (1895–present) / Relocation and later history
caption_attribution_description: English: The First Presbyterian Church of Newtown, or First Presbyterian Church of Elmhurst, looking from the north side of Queens Boulevard and 54th Avenue in Elmhurst, Queens.
context_page_description: The First Presbyterian Church of Newtown is a historic Presbyterian church in the Elmhurst neighborhood of Queens in New York City. The church complex is composed of the main church, a parish hall, and a manse. The current complex at 54th Avenue, between Seabury Street and Queens Boulevard, is the fifth church complex built for the congregation.
  The congregation was founded in 1652 and was originally housed in a building that it shared with other congregations. In 1669, the town of Newtown erected a new building for the churches. The congregation became part of the Presbyterian Church in 1715 and built a structure that was demolished during the American Revolutionary War. A second building, called the Old White Church, was erected in 1791 and remained standing until 1928. The congregation moved to its current building when it was completed in 1895. The manse was built in 1907. Both the church building and manse were moved in 1924 when Queens Boulevard was widened, and the parish hall was built in 1931.
  The current church building is a Late Gothic Revival style, granite and brownstone church with a steep slate gable roof.
context_section_description: Queens Boulevard was developed in the early 20th century, incorporating the former Hoffman Boulevard and connecting Elmhurst to the Queensboro Bridge to Manhattan. The city government formed a commission in 1912 to expropriate land and compensate property owners. In the First Presbyterian Church of Newtown's case, the city offered to either buy and raze the church building or pay the congregation $35,000 for relocation; the congregation chose the latter. 
  The agreement was made in 1917, but no action was taken until 1922. Walter Kidde and Company were hired to move the church on rollers at a cost of $87,000. Beginning in February 1924 and continuing until late that year, the current 3,000-short-ton (2,700 t) church was moved 125 feet (38 m) south. The 1907 manse was also relocated to Seabury Street and 54th Avenue, behind the church building. The steeple was taken down and the stones stored for later reassembly, though this never happened. The Christian Endeavor building was demolished because the congregation hoped to build a larger social hall.
  In 1930, the church's chapel was condemned for the construction of the Independent Subway System's Queens Boulevard Line, whose Grand Avenue–Newtown station contained an entrance directly outside the church. The church hired Meyer & Mathieu to design a new parish house, which was built by Charles R. Krieg Inc. in 1931 at a cost of $75,000. The city was to compensate the church for the acquisition, but the compensation was delayed. Instead, the church paid for the parish house by taking out a $60,000 mortgage in 1930; the mortgage was paid off five years later when the city compensated the church. At the time, it was the church's only debt in its 283-year history, and the church celebrated by burning the mortgage papers. Commercial developers offered the church a $1,000,000 offer for its building in 1951, but the offer was rejected. The following year, U.S. president Harry S. Truman sent a message to the church for its 300th anniversary.
  The old church cemetery's land was sold in 1958; the corpses were disinterred and moved to the Cemetery of the Evergreens. By the early 1980s, Elmhurst was becoming increasingly populated by immigrants, and the First Presbyterian Church of Newtown had parishioners who had immigrated from 40 countries. Despite this, the church's then-pastor, the Rev. Charles Sorg, continued to conduct services entirely in English, saying that this would unite immigrants with a single language and "enable people to accommodate themselves into the American scene". To celebrate the church's 350th anniversary in 2003, the congregation planted two trees of Newtown Pippins, a type of apple that had first been grown in a nearby orchard in the 17th or 18th century. The church was deemed eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 2012, and was listed on the NRHP the next year.
caption: Seen from across Queens Boulevard
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