Garden City wants to save the old St. Paul's School. What to do with it remains a question.

The hulking Victorian Gothic landmark known as St. Paul's School, in the heart of Garden City, has sat deteriorating for more than three decades as debate has divided the community over what to do with it: restore it — which could cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars and prompt tax spikes — or raze it.  

But now, a group looking to preserve the 19th-century building is hopeful that its sweep in village elections last month translates into a third option — "landmarking" it and making about $10 million worth of repairs that could ultimately give it new life.

Any practical use, however, is still years away.

The building, which opened in 1883, has been closed since 1991, when the Episcopal Church, which operated it, decided it was no longer financially viable. Now owned by the village, it sits empty, behind a chain-link fence, a point of contention since even before it shut its doors. 

The latest development: A preservation-minded slate on March 18 swept four trustee posts up for election against opponents who had pitched a plan to raze most of the old school.

Incumbent village trustee Vinny Muldoon, of the preservationist group, said that after years of faltering proposals, the village now has an opportunity to preserve its history without overburdening taxpayers.

Muldoon's Community Agreement Party, in the lead-up to the election, proposed the landmarking option: Coming up with $10.1 million to repair the roof and make other, mostly exterior fixes to stop further deterioration to the mammoth building, but without resolving the ultimate issue of what to do with it. The work likely would be bonded by the village over a 15-year span, according to the CAP group's website.

“People have been trying to hit home runs for 33 years,” Muldoon said. "When we looked at it, we said, ‘How about we try and hit a single and get to first base and move off home plate and do what you can afford?’ ”

Muldoon's slate was elected decisively. Trustees serve unpaid two-year terms. There are a total of seven on the village board, not counting Mayor Edward Finneran.

Finneran, in an interview Friday, said he took the election to be a mandate for landmarking. “I'm optimistic that we'll be able to effectuate this plan. It'll take a little bit of time, but we'll get hopefully most of it done within the next year,” he said.

Finneran, who is also a member of the preservationist group, was elected last year, running on a platform that called for an open, transparent process regarding the future of the building.

Jo-Ann Frey, who ran on the losing For a Better Garden City Party slate last month, told Newsday the building would have been worth saving years ago, before it began to deteriorate, but now it’s too late.

“What the residents have is a building that is in disrepair and is an attractive nuisance in the middle of the village on prime real estate that they're spending money for that they cannot use,” she said.

In recent years, there has been an undercurrent of support for preservation efforts. But with options ranging from $40 million to $80 million, Finneran said, it became clear that the village had other priorities, including infrastructure investments in the firehouse, sewage treatment facilities and roadwork.

In fall 2023, the village polled its residents on whether the school should be saved or razed. About 61% of more than 4,300 who responded said they wanted to preserve it.

At that time, a Manhattan-based construction firm provided cost estimates for scenarios that included repurposing and restoring it. The price tags were high: Restoring, without creating usable space inside, was estimated to cost almost $40 million. Restoring it and finishing the interior would add as much as $30 million more. 

A village survey compiled last year considered price tags that ranged from $35 million for "mothballing" the building to $83 million for "partial replacement." The survey found that 50% of respondents didn't support any of those options and were opposed to any tax increase to pay for preservation.

In a statement, Muldoon said the survey revealed the proposals were untenable and that the less costly landmarking was a path forward.

While most who responded to the survey wanted to see the school saved, it "demonstrated that the majority of residents did not support a massive tax increase for a large-scale project, whether adaptive reuse or otherwise," he said.

Built on a barren plain

Garden City is relatively small and affluent, with a population of 22,993 and a median household income of $244,152, according to 2024 U.S. Census estimates — nearly three times the state's median income. 

When St. Paul's was built, the village was a barely a dot on the map — a development founded in 1869 on open prairie by Alexander Turney Stewart, a wealthy merchant from New York City. 

After his death in 1876, his widow, Cornelia, had the school built in his honor, as well as the Episcopal cathedral where his remains were interred. 

The village "didn't even have a tree on it" when the school was built, village historian William Bellmer said in an interview. "You could probably see it from any place in the village and beyond, because of course the whole village was built on the Hempstead Plains."

For most of its history, St. Paul's was a boys preparatory school. At one time it had served grades K-12, Newsday reported, with the attending grades changing over the years.

President Donald Trump's two brothers, Robert and Fred Jr., attended, and a field was named after their father, according to news reports. Enrollment peaked at about 550 in the 1950s.

In 1978, the school was among 50 structures added to the National Register of Historic Places as buildings of the "A.T. Stewart Era" — components of "Long Island's first planned suburban community," according to the application filed with the U.S. Department of the Interior.

A decade later, in 1988, it combined with a girls school to become St. Paul's and St. Mary's School. By that time, the campus was well integrated into the community, with annual public events like cat shows, a gem and mineral festival, and a Victorian fair.

Wayne Huneke was a social studies teacher at the school in its final years. He lived on campus, in a cottage with his wife. What made the school special was the bond between students and teachers, he said. Some other faculty members lived on campus, too.

“We were very close with the kids," Huneke said. “It was just a family.” 

But in 1991, the school announced that year's senior class would be its last. It faced shrinking enrollment — 204 by the time it closed, Newsday reported — and a $5 million budget deficit, in part due to capital spending to renovate it as part of the merger with St. Mary’s.

At the time, parents were trying to raise $3 million to keep it open. However, the Very Rev. Robert Wilshire, dean of the cathedral, told Newsday then that there was no plan to reverse its decision. "But if someone came up with a fairy godmother with lots and lots and lots of money, who knows?" he said.

The church sought bidders to buy the property, with Adelphi University expressing interest. But in 1992, the diocese accepted a $7.2 million bid from the village, and the following year, voters overwhelmingly approved issuing an $8.5 million bond to buy and repair the 48.6-acre campus.

Since then, its future has been in limbo.

In the 2000s, several plans were floated but didn’t succeed, including moving the Garden City public library there and transforming it into senior housing.

In 2011-2012, village trustees sought to demolish the building, which was costing about $100,000 a year to maintain. But in a nonbinding referendum, residents overwhelmingly rejected demolition, Newsday reported then. An $8.2 million plan was floated to turn it into a community center, but that proposal also fizzled.

The problem, Bellmer said, is that solutions involving tax money are always controversial. "There's always something that the residents would like to spend the money on besides what's suggested," he said. 

'The best four years of my life'

Alumni, hundreds of whom belong to a Facebook group, remain passionate about the school. They credit it for giving them a foundation for success. 

Nathaniel Wright's mother enrolled him in St. Paul's in the 1980s when she became alarmed that Hempstead schools weren't safe for her child. "It was a great experience where I got to be friends with people I probably wouldn't have been friends with otherwise," Wright, 56, said.

While the school was relatively diverse racially and ethnically — Wright said he was one of three Black students in his graduating class — he said there was also diversity of income, with wealthy students mixing with scholarship kids. 

The school uniforms — blue blazers and ties — helped level the playing field, he said.

Wright went on to become a lawyer and has stayed in touch with friends from "the best four years of my life."

Pat Charlemagne, of Baldwin, graduated in that final Class of '91. She said the teachers “had very high standards and they treated everyone the same way.”

“They were all committed to excellence,” said Charlemagne, the executive director of Girls Inc. of Long Island, an organization that mentors girls. “They wanted everyone to be the best that they could be.”

Bruce Fernandez was a student at the school in the 1970s, busing in from Rockville Centre. 

"I have more close friends from my St. Paul's days than I do from my college days," said Fernandez, who now lives in Florida and works in insurance. "The friendships were deep." 

Fernandez said he wished someone would save the school and finally make something of it. "You don't tear it down," he said. "You don't just let it sit there and rot, you come up with a solution for it."

Muldoon agrees. He said the building is an architectural gem that defines the village, even as it sits empty, a source of strife for decades.

“But the reality is, the people have spoken now in this election and said, 'OK, we want to move forward,'" he said.