How a 215-Year-Old UWS Church Continues to Flourish: Accessibility and a ‘Desire to Serve’

By Gus Saltonstall

The atmosphere was festive last week inside of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church on the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and West 99th Street.

The church, which first opened on the same Upper West Side corner in 1807, held an event for locals on Thursday to highlight the recent improvements that have taken place within the landmarked building.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, St. Michael’s has undergone a renovation project that has seen the following upgrades take place:

• Two new external wheelchair-accessible ramps and an elevator.
• New accessible bathrooms.
• Traffic flow improved within the building by better connecting the Parish House and Sanctuary.
• A new nursery space.
• Infrastructure improvements, including upgrades to electrical, plumbing, and draining.

In its first phase of renovation, the church focused on the more “nuts and bolts” elements of the two-century-old building, and will now shift its focus to better utilizing already-existing spaces for music, events, and meals.

“There has been a desire to serve,” Rev. Katharine Flexer, who has been at the church since 2005, told West Side Rag. “When we began to engage the question of the building’s accessibility, we made sure to ask — ‘how can we make it accessible for all?'”

Staff and members of the church led groups Thursday on a tour of the building to highlight where the changes have taken place and where future improvements might be made. Councilmembers Shaun Abreu and Gale Brewer were both in attendance, as well as a representative from Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal’s office.

The Upper West Side church had to navigate the city’s Landmark Preservation Commission to approve the renovations, and raised $2.1 million to complete the work. The church has a congregation of 400 people and generally gets close to 200 attendees at Sunday mass.

A total of 85 percent of the congregation donated to the fundraising campaign.

Funding for St. Michael’s also comes from its ownership of a cemetery in Queens and a lot on West 99th Street.

“St. Michael’s is incredibly blessed to have got some resources that were tended well over the years,” Flexer added. “We’ve had people that have made good long-term decisions, which has put us in a better place today.”

Along with worship gatherings, St. Michael’s Church hosts and oversees Sunday school, choir groups, homework help and tutoring programs, 12-step meetings, and a Saturday food pantry that has served Upper West Siders for the last 40 years.

There is also a Spanish-language pre-school that operates out of the basement of the church, along with Russian and Mandarin language schools within the building.

Prior to the pandemic, the food pantry served around 80 people every weekend, but following COVID-19 and, then, the influx of migrants on the Upper West Side, the pantry now provides hot meals for over 300 people every Saturday.

Part of the building’s next phase of renovation will be to create more space to store and serve food.

Among the St. Michael’s community members leading the tours was Mississippi native Lucy Culver, who has taught Sunday school at the Upper West Side house of worship for the last 12 years.

“St. Michael’s is a true reflection of the neighborhood. The word diverse gets thrown around a lot, but the community here is as diverse as they come,” she told the Rag. “I love St. Michael’s for a lot of reasons, it’s like a moral reset.”

“We come here Sunday morning. New York is a noisy place and this is where you can come and sit, and reflect on whether you’re being the best person you can be,” she continued. “What is my path? How can I help? This church just offers so much to so many people.”

You can find out more about St. Michael’s Episcopal Church and its programs — HERE.

Subscribe to West Side Rag’s FREE email newsletter here.