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Summarized by Kent Larsen
Mormons Building Chapel And Support in N. Manhattan
New York NY Daily News 17Mar00 D1
By Juan Gonzalez
NEW YORK, NEW YORK -- The island of Manhattan will see its 2nd LDS
Chapel, a newly constructed building on Riverside Drive across the
street from Fort Tryon Park in upper Manhattan. The building is the
first constructed by the Church in more than 25 years, and represents
the growth of the Church here. The Daily News' Juan Gonzalez, who
doesn't suffer fools lightly, calls the new chapel "a marvelous new
building" that is bound to be "the chief attraction in the
neighborhood."
"I've been in this neighborhood 27 years and never seen anything like
it," said Bob Tortorello, who runs Broadyke meat store on Broadway.
The building will feature a steeple rising nearly seven stories and a
facade of intricate stone and brick that set it apart from the
buildings in the neighborhood, but let it manage to still look like
it was planned to be part of the neighborhood.
The main chapel covers two stories, unlike most new LDS Chapels, and
includes two dozen classrooms, a basketball court and a 200-seat
chapel, along with other standard elements. Built to eventually be a
stake center, the building also includes an underground parking
garage.
"We're very pleased with how the chapel has turned out," says Richard
Hedberg, a Westchester County Bishop who finds chapel sites
throughout the Northeastern U.S. for the Church. The building will
relieve a shortage of chapels on Manhattan, which currently has 10
wards and branches meeting in three buildings.
However, the new building won't completely resolve the need for
buildings on Manhattan. Seven of the New York, New York wards and
branches will still meet in the nearly 30-year-old Lincoln Center
building, which was recently remodeled to include two chapels and
cultural halls and accompanying classrooms, stake offices, a large
family history center and offices for LDS Church Public Affairs and
Employment, spread over five floors of a large LDS Church-owned
building.
Gonzalez mentions that the LDS Church is returning to its roots in
New York, since the LDS Church was founded in upstate New York 170
years ago. Giving some background on the LDS Church, Gonzalez wonders
if maybe the "lost tribe" that traveled from Jerusalem to the
Americas, as described in the Book of Mormon, could be the ancestors
of the Tainos, Indians of the Dominican Republic who's blood flows in
many of the immigrants that make up this part of Manhattan.
And if he is right, maybe that explains why so many have joined the
Church in northern Manhattan that New York, New York Stake President
Brent Belnap says the area "almost has a Utah feel to it."
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