Um, “Poltergeist?”
A Brooklyn church yesterday cleared out the remains of 211 corpses that had been buried for more than a century in an adjacent crypt to help pave the way for a controversial luxury condo complex.
The 109-year-old United Methodist Church in Bay Ridge is under contract to sell its church and grounds along Fourth Avenue for $9.75 million to developer Abe Batech, who wants to replace it with a six- to seven-story condo project, Councilman Vincent Gentile said.
The church and two other buildings on the site are slated for demolition by the end of May. But yesterday’s action was a shocking reminder to activists fighting to preserve the so-called “Green Church” – with its serpentine green sandstone – that the grand but crumbling building’s days are numbered.
“It’s like rape” in the “name of greed,” said, Kathleen Walker, who heads a committee fighting to save the church from bulldozers.
“I wouldn’t buy a condo there; who would want to live above an ex-crypt?”
The unidentified remains of the 211 early members of the church’s congregation were moved to Cypress Hills Cemetery.
It was the second time they had been moved. The congregation dates back to 1830 to earlier Bay Ridge locations, and the remains were moved to the existing church site when it opened in 1899 – but without individually identifying each corpse.
The church’s congregation has shrunk to a paltry 40. Its members said it would be too expensive to restore the church, and that it’s more sensible to relocate to a smaller church to be built less than a block away.
Gentile (D-Brooklyn) said it’s telling that Batech wants no part of removing the remains and demolishing the buildings, and is having the church do it as part of the agreement.
“It’s a sad day for all those ancestors of the church, whose bodies were at rest, to now have to be uprooted, disturbing their eternal peace in the name of residential development,” said Gentile, who is still attempting to find an alternate buyer who would preserve the church structure.
Batech was unavailable for comment.