4 Years After Fire Destroyed It, Middle Collegiate Church Is Reborn on Easter Sunday

The historic Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village returned home this Easter Sunday after a devastating six-alarm fire on December 5, 2020, forced it to close.

The 128-year-old church, on Second Avenue between Seventh and Eighth streets, was fully destroyed, and the façade that church leaders initially hoped to salvage eventually had to be taken down in 2023.

“I’ll never un-see our building on fire,” said the Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, senior minister at the Middle Church. “Yet we have received so much love and support; people call us their Notre Dame,” she said. The medieval cathedral in Paris recently reopened after its own devastating fire.

The sanctuary where Middle Church services are now held was connected to the church. Where the church stood is now an empty lot, but the church hopes to raise enough money to turn it into a community green space.

The fire, amid the COVID pandemic, had already separated the community, forcing it to connect through the digital world. After the fire, when the flock wanted to return post-COVID, neighboring communities such as Judson Memorial Church, East End Temple, and Calvary Episcopal lent their support and sanctuaries to Middle Collegiate.

Everything is not back, but as of Easter, the church’s program building on East Seventh Street. has been renovated, representing Phase 1 of the rebuilding efforts, providing space for community activities, concerts, art; it now also serves as the sanctuary for services. The congregation, approximately 1,400 at the start of the pandemic, has increased to over 2,000 members from 22 countries and 48 states.

The Christian congregation is part of the United Dutch Reformed Church. While the building that burned down was 128 years old, the church congregation traces its roots back more than 400 years. Today, it includes a diversity of ages, backgrounds, races, and identities. It defines itself as a “multicultural, multiethnic, intergenerational movement of Spirit and Justice, powered by fierce revolutionary Love, with room for all,” Lewis said.

“After a fire, sometimes you might walk away,” said Lewis, but she vowed that was not what this church was going to do. It was an integral part of the neighborhood during the AIDS epidemic, and it was coming back again to help foster and grow with the community. The renovated facility on East Seventh Street has space for conferences, concerts, programs, and a new 225-seat sanctuary.

A “miracle” is how the space looks so beautiful, said Lewis.

Congregants uniformly expressed their joy at the church’s reopening and the grievous sense of loss they felt caused by the fire. Danita Branam, a retired manager of technology installation for financial services, has been a member for the past 24 years.

“For the church to reopen is an achievement of love, faith, and perseverance, and an accomplishment of the entire community,” Branam said. A resident of the Upper East Side, she is a member because of the church’s dedication to ridding the world, starting with the city and nation, of racism and all other similar “isms.” The church, she says, believes in “the generosity of God’s love, to love your neighbor and the stranger, and that all strangers are neighbors.”

Edna Benitez, a retired banker, has been a member shortly after 9/11 after seeing a sign for a peace-lighting event sponsored by the church. After leaving the neighborhood, she has remained a congregant due to shared values and a sense of community. She remembers getting a call at 5am that the fire was burning and ran over to see the building in flames. The reopening to her means “reclaiming the space and Christianity.”

Jason Enlow, a banker, was living on East 6th Street and dating his now-wife when he began attending. He said his father is a reverend, and Jason has continued his own spiritual journey as an adult. The church aligns with his values; he appreciates Dr. Lewis’s charisma, her values, her passion for advocating for those values, and the church’s message that “God’s love is given to everyone unconditionally.”

“Being back is a major step in the healing process,” he says. “The church has been an anchor for my family and children, and the reopening is a return to normalcy. It is hard to describe how happy I am to be back.”

“The church is coming home to the neighborhood so they can love their neighbors even harder, take care of those less fortunate, and to be a voice for those persons who have no voice,” said Lewis. The space on Second Avenue, the open lot, is part of the Phase 2 plan. The church plans to take green space outside, level it and then figure out how to build back better. After a harrowing experience, it remains committed to justice, and economic equity, and is renewing its “commitment to welcome our communities and to stand on the side of love,” said Lewis.