Historic churches in Setauket, Sayville awarded preservation grants

When the light shines through the stained-glass windows at Caroline Episcopal Church of Setauket, they glow with the lives of parishioners who donated them over the past 200 years. Next year, the windows will be coming down temporarily, to be restored and preserved for new generations.

The church and the Sayville Congregational United Church of Christ are two historic Long Island churches awarded preservation grants by the New York Landmarks Conservancy. The two were among 17 houses of worship across the state awarded grants under the nonprofit’s Sacred Sites program. Money for Long Island grants comes from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation.

“Religious buildings reflect a community’s history,” said Colleen Heemeyer, director of the Sacred Sites program. While they serve their parishioners, religious buildings often serve their communities in other ways, such as providing food pantries and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and being a performance and rehearsal space for music and dance companies, Heemeyer said.

“These buildings have a religious function, but they also have a secondary, very important function as third spaces … where the community comes together to gather socially, community-wise for services,” she said.

Windows upgrade in Setauket

The $25,000 grant for the Caroline Episcopal Church will cover a portion of the estimated $150,000 cost of renovating the church’s 14 stained-glass windows, Barbara Russell, a warden at the church, said. The church expects to start fundraising in January.

The stained-glass windows aren’t original to the building, which was built in 1729 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

“Most of them are memorial windows that have been given from families over the years, and the majority of them depict religious symbols,” Russell said. They were donated in the 19th century and early to mid-20th century.

In the 1930s, during an earlier renovation, the idea was suggested to remove the windows and return them to clear glass, Russell said. The congregation was “adamant” that memorial windows given by families who were still at the church be kept, and so they were, Russell said.

“There’s nobody in the congregation today that would remember the church without the glass windows,” Russell said.

The stories behind most of the windows have been lost, Russell said. But one behind the altar depicting a figure in a cloak with two children is known to have been donated by a widower in the congregation. The parishioner lost his wife and two of his three children to diphtheria and gave it in their memory, Russell said.

The image can be interpreted in different ways, Russell said.

“You can look at it as like, Jesus said, 'Come to me, children,'” Russell said. “Or you can look at it as the mother and the two children.”

Another window has an anchor, which she said in Christianity represents hope and salvation but could also reflect the parishioner’s personal relationship to the water.

“This man happened to grow up with a mother who was the lighthouse keeper in the nearby lighthouse on Long Island Sound,” Russell said.

The windows will be removed a few at a time and brought to Somers Studios in St. James, a family business that specializes in stained glass.

They will repair any broken glass or joints and replace any missing glass, said Guy Somers, president and owner of Somers Studios.

The pieces of stained glass are held in place with pieces of metal called lead came.

“What happens with lead came, eventually it buckles,” Somers said. “What we do is we flatten it out and then we use a putty compound … and we brush it between the glass and the lead came.”

The putty, which is based on a centuries-old formula, will stiffen up and weatherproof the window so that it will be good for another 50 to 70 years, Somers said.

Exterior repairs in Sayville

The Sayville Congregational United Church of Christ will use an $11,000 grant to renovate parts of the church’s exterior, including trim, wood shingles, storm windows and gutters. The project for the church, built in 1858, was originally thought to total about $50,000, but tariffs have driven up some costs, said the Rev. Kathryn Kelly.

“We’re trying to match the original building material as much as possible,” Kelly said. “So we have to use wood like mahogany, which is a lot more expensive than pine.”

Parts of the roof will be repaired, which means getting cranes and lifts to reach those spots.

“We have a bell tower and some very high parts of the roof that are tricky and we have very specific materials that we have to use,” Kelly said.

She said the New York Landmarks Conservancy helped the church find contractors who could do the work, which is expected to take three to four months.

“We don’t want to do this on the cheap and to maintain the integrity, but knowing to do that is an overwhelming process,” Kelly said.

The church has an endowment and some savings that will help with the costs, she said, though it will require some additional fundraising.

“The congregation is very mindful about preserving the integrity of the building and so they financially support those renovations,” Kelly said.