By Scott Etkin
While plenty of large-scale sidewalk sheds are installed during routine repairs on the Upper West Side, one of the neighborhood’s most massive scaffolding structures is serving a higher purpose (so to speak) as part of the historic restoration of St. Paul & St. Andrew United Methodist Church at the corner of West 86th Street and West End Avenue.
The $5 million project is to replace the original roof, which dates back to 1897.
“It’s what’s known as a hundred-year roof. You know, which is great. But it’s not a 129-year roof. Therein lies the problem,” said the Rev. K Karpen, the church’s senior pastor, on a call with the Rag.
From inside the church, signs of the roof’s problems are hard to miss. “If you walk in the sanctuary and look up, you can see a lot of areas where the water has infiltrated and the paint is getting flaky, as well as occasional actual leaks that fall down,” said Karpen, who has helped lead the congregation for the past 40 years.
The roof restoration began in fall 2025 when workers took the existing roof down to its wood sheathing. They then checked the underlying material and rafters.“Underneath we found it to be pretty well intact,” said Karpen.
The next step involved adding a layer of plywood, which adds strength, then covering it with a breathable and watertight membrane.
Finally comes the last and most notable part of the restoration: replacing tens of thousands of terra cotta tiles, known as Spanish tiles. The building was designated as an individual landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission more than 40 years ago. This means that any restoration of the facade needs to adhere to the building’s original design and materials.
As a result, St. Paul & St. Andrew’s ordered 29,250 Spanish tiles from the only factory in North America that makes them, which happens to be in New Lexington, Ohio, according to Karpen. The tiles took a year to be delivered, and installation began July 16. The restoration is expected to be completed by early October.
All of this would have been impossible, of course, without a massive amount of scaffolding. The scaffolding, permitted in September 2025, covers the entirety of the building’s facades along West End Avenue and West 86th Street, and wraps around the taller of its two towers. This network of steel poles and netting is by now extremely familiar to the many people who use the church not only as a place of worship, but also for music and theater performances, after-school programs, food distributions, and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
Having a variety of partners who rent space in the building, including Goddard Riverside and the West Side Campaign Against Hunger, helps the church stay financially viable, according to the Rev. Andrea Steinkamp, another pastor. It’s also an important way that the church integrates with the surrounding community. “We’re virtually never closed,” she said.
The scaffolding-related engineering represents only half the challenge; the other half is financial. So far, the church has raised $4.9 million out of the total $5 million cost of the roof replacement.
Fundraising kicked off in October 2023 when the church received a $250,000 matching grant from the National Fund for Sacred Spaces, a program of Partners for Sacred Places in collaboration with the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Since then, the campaign has received donations from current and former members of its congregation and neighbors. This includes a seven-figure donor and multiple six-figure donors. The church has also received a $45,000 donation from the New York Landmarks Conservancy, a historic preservation nonprofit.
Earlier this year, the church set out to close the remaining gap in funds through a “Sponsor-a-Tile” campaign. At a blessing ceremony in May, donors wrote inscriptions – such as personal messages, signatures, prayers, and pictures – on hundreds of the aforementioned Spanish tiles from Ohio.
“We’ve had people who have given at every level to this campaign,” said Karpen. “What we wanted to do with this [Sponsor-a-Tile] campaign is say, ‘Hey, we’re almost there, and we are doing this amazing thing that really felt, I don’t know, maybe a little bit impossible.’”
It’s easy to imagine the building not making it to this point. In the late 1970s, when the congregation was down to 30 people, these remaining members sought to demolish the church and erect a new building with combined housing and worship space.
The plan was thwarted by the building’s landmark status. “The congregation petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to ban landmarking of houses of worship as an infringement of First Amendment religious freedom protections, but the court declined to hear the case,” according to the National Fund for Sacred Places.
The congregation now has 130 people attending services on a typical Sunday, and it has many more partners in the neighborhood who use the building’s space.
“I’m glad we didn’t end up going down that route, because you don’t build these buildings again,” said Karpen. “They’re never going to get built again.”
Read more:
- UWS Shed Watch: A New Monthly Column from West Side Rag
- UWS Shed Watch: Many Sidewalk Sheds Are There for Mandatory Facade Inspections — Could That Change?
- UWS Shed Watch: Preserving the Upper West Side’s Historic Charm Takes Time – and Sidewalk Sheds
Subscribe to West Side Rag’s FREE email newsletter here. And you can Support the Rag here.
For the West Park people, note the roof replacement alone costs $5M, which is what the West Park arts org claims is all that’s needed for the entire church on 86th.
Clearly much more will be needed on 86th
It’s too bad they weren’t able to convert to a new church building plus housing back in the 1970s; that’s nearly 60 years of housing we’ve missed out on. Hopefully we don’t make this mistake again with West Park Presbyterian.
How much does it cost to sponsor a tile and how does one do so?