Foster Memorial AME Zion Church
Encyclopedia
The Foster Memorial AME Zion Church
is located on Wildey Avenue in Tarrytown
, New York
, United States
. Formed in 1860, it is the oldest black church in Westchester County
and possibly one of the oldest in the state. During the Civil War
it was a stop on the Underground Railroad
. One of the church's founders was herself an escaped slave, as were many parishioners. They helped slaves either continue to Canada
or settle in Tarrytown if they wished. The church has played a major role in Tarrytown's African-American community ever since.
The church's brick building, designed by local architect
James Bird, was opened in 1865. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places
in 1982.
building two storys high. The red brick of its surface is only visible on the facade
and is elsewhere covered by an artificial stone veneer. The gable
roof is likewise of imitation slate
. Pilaster
s on the front flanks support triangular granite
capstone
s. A cinder block
addition is on the rear.
Inside, the first floor is devoted to offices, a kitchen
and large meeting room. The sanctuary
is on the second floor, entered from the north with the altar
and podium
to the south. On either side are marble
tablet
s commemorating founders Henry Foster and Henry Brown.
in 1837, with a White Plains
group following six years later. In 1860, four members of the latter congregation from Tarrytown decided to organize locally. They were Henry Foster, a barber
, his wife Amanda, their friend Hiram Jimerson and The Rev. Jacob Thomas.
At first the four founders and three more local members met in whatever space they could borrow. They began in the room over Amanda Taylor's popular local confectionery
. As the congregation began to grow, they moved to another store and then a shoe factory. Finally, with the assistance of white members of the local Dutch Reformed
and Methodist congregations, the new church formed a committee to find and purchase land for a church of its own.
Local builder and architect James Bird contributed the design, and the cornerstone
was laid in October 1864. Henry Foster died the next year, urging his wife to continue the church's development as he expected a large-scale migration of freed slaves from the South after the end of the war. While that did not happen initially, Amanda Foster would continue to play a major role in the church's development and is today revered as the "Mother of the Church".
After a construction expenditure of $9,120.85, the church opened in 1865. As was typical of the time, the cost was partly defrayed by charging for the pew
s, in this case an annual rent of $3. In lean economic times, the congregants practiced "pounding" their pastor, each member bringing him and his family a pound
of food when the church could not afford to pay him. The church grew slowly, including some whites, numbering 40 members by 1886.
Amanda Foster died in 1904 at the age of 98. The wave of southern blacks that her husband had anticipated finally materialized in the years afterwards, and during the Great Migration
the church served as a community center for new arrivals in the Tarrytown area, helping them acclimate to an urban lifestyle.
The 20th century saw the first physical alterations to the church building, as its limited finances in turn limited what could be done to stave off deterioration. In the 1930s the original roof was replaced. The Meadowstone coating was applied to the sides and rear in the 1950s. The following decade the rear wing was added, expanding the available space in both the sanctuary and meeting room, and the original minister's apartment was converted into an auditorium
. Pastor Madison McRae continued the church's activist traditions, leading protests against housing discrimination and persuading the Tarrytown Fire Department to hire more African-Americans.
African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, or AME Zion Church, is a historically African-American Christian denomination. It was officially formed in 1821, but operated for a number of years before then....
is located on Wildey Avenue in Tarrytown
Tarrytown, New York
Tarrytown is a village in the town of Greenburgh in Westchester County, New York, United States. It is located on the eastern bank of the Hudson River, about north of midtown Manhattan in New York City, and is served by a stop on the Metro-North Hudson Line...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Formed in 1860, it is the oldest black church in Westchester County
Westchester County, New York
Westchester County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. Westchester covers an area of and has a population of 949,113 according to the 2010 Census, residing in 45 municipalities...
and possibly one of the oldest in the state. During the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
it was a stop on the Underground Railroad
Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. The term is also applied to the abolitionists,...
. One of the church's founders was herself an escaped slave, as were many parishioners. They helped slaves either continue to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
or settle in Tarrytown if they wished. The church has played a major role in Tarrytown's African-American community ever since.
The church's brick building, designed by local architect
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
James Bird, was opened in 1865. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
in 1982.
Building
The church is a three-by-four-bayBay (architecture)
A bay is a unit of form in architecture. This unit is defined as the zone between the outer edges of an engaged column, pilaster, or post; or within a window frame, doorframe, or vertical 'bas relief' wall form.-Defining elements:...
building two storys high. The red brick of its surface is only visible on the facade
Facade
A facade or façade is generally one exterior side of a building, usually, but not always, the front. The word comes from the French language, literally meaning "frontage" or "face"....
and is elsewhere covered by an artificial stone veneer. The gable
Gable
A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of a sloping roof. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system being used and aesthetic concerns. Thus the type of roof enclosing the volume dictates the shape of the gable...
roof is likewise of imitation slate
Slate
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. The result is a foliated rock in which the foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering...
. Pilaster
Pilaster
A pilaster is a slightly-projecting column built into or applied to the face of a wall. Most commonly flattened or rectangular in form, pilasters can also take a half-round form or the shape of any type of column, including tortile....
s on the front flanks support triangular granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
capstone
Capstone
Capstone may refer to:* Coping , one of the finishing or protective stones that form the top of an exterior masonry wall or building* Capstone , a US government project about cryptographic standards...
s. A cinder block
Cinder block
In the United States, a concrete masonry unit – also called concrete block, cement block, and foundation block – is a large rectangular brick used in construction. Concrete blocks are made from cast concrete, i.e. Portland cement and aggregate, usually sand and fine gravel for high-density blocks...
addition is on the rear.
Inside, the first floor is devoted to offices, a kitchen
Kitchen
A kitchen is a room or part of a room used for cooking and food preparation.In the West, a modern residential kitchen is typically equipped with a stove, a sink with hot and cold running water, a refrigerator and kitchen cabinets arranged according to a modular design. Many households have a...
and large meeting room. The sanctuary
Sanctuary
A sanctuary is any place of safety. They may be categorized into human and non-human .- Religious sanctuary :A religious sanctuary can be a sacred place , or a consecrated area of a church or temple around its tabernacle or altar.- Sanctuary as a sacred place :#Sanctuary as a sacred place:#:In...
is on the second floor, entered from the north with the altar
Altar
An altar is any structure upon which offerings such as sacrifices are made for religious purposes. Altars are usually found at shrines, and they can be located in temples, churches and other places of worship...
and podium
Podium
A podium is a platform that is used to raise something to a short distance above its surroundings. It derives from the Greek πόδι In architecture a building can rest on a large podium. Podia can also be used to raise people, for instance the conductor of an orchestra stands on a podium as do many...
to the south. On either side are marble
Marble
Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...
tablet
Commemorative plaque
A commemorative plaque, or simply plaque, is a plate of metal, ceramic, stone, wood, or other material, typically attached to a wall, stone, or other vertical surface, and bearing text in memory of an important figure or event...
s commemorating founders Henry Foster and Henry Brown.
History
The first AME Zion congregation in Westchester was established in New RochelleNew Rochelle, New York
New Rochelle is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States, in the southeastern portion of the state.The town was settled by refugee Huguenots in 1688 who were fleeing persecution in France...
in 1837, with a White Plains
White Plains, New York
White Plains is a city and the county seat of Westchester County, New York, United States. It is located in south-central Westchester, about east of the Hudson River and northwest of Long Island Sound...
group following six years later. In 1860, four members of the latter congregation from Tarrytown decided to organize locally. They were Henry Foster, a barber
Barber
A barber is someone whose occupation is to cut any type of hair, and to shave or trim the beards of men. The place of work of a barber is generally called a barbershop....
, his wife Amanda, their friend Hiram Jimerson and The Rev. Jacob Thomas.
At first the four founders and three more local members met in whatever space they could borrow. They began in the room over Amanda Taylor's popular local confectionery
Confectionery
Confectionery is the set of food items that are rich in sugar, any one or type of which is called a confection. Modern usage may include substances rich in artificial sweeteners as well...
. As the congregation began to grow, they moved to another store and then a shoe factory. Finally, with the assistance of white members of the local Dutch Reformed
Reformed Church of the Tarrytowns
The Reformed Church of the Tarrytowns in Tarrytown, New York serves both Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow, New York. It was constructed in 1837 as an extension of the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow to serve the Tarrytown community....
and Methodist congregations, the new church formed a committee to find and purchase land for a church of its own.
Local builder and architect James Bird contributed the design, and the cornerstone
Cornerstone
The cornerstone concept is derived from the first stone set in the construction of a masonry foundation, important since all other stones will be set in reference to this stone, thus determining the position of the entire structure.Over time a cornerstone became a ceremonial masonry stone, or...
was laid in October 1864. Henry Foster died the next year, urging his wife to continue the church's development as he expected a large-scale migration of freed slaves from the South after the end of the war. While that did not happen initially, Amanda Foster would continue to play a major role in the church's development and is today revered as the "Mother of the Church".
After a construction expenditure of $9,120.85, the church opened in 1865. As was typical of the time, the cost was partly defrayed by charging for the pew
Pew
A pew is a long bench seat or enclosed box used for seating members of a congregation or choir in a church, or sometimes in a courtroom.-Overview:Churches were not commonly furnished with permanent pews before the Protestant Reformation...
s, in this case an annual rent of $3. In lean economic times, the congregants practiced "pounding" their pastor, each member bringing him and his family a pound
Pound (mass)
The pound or pound-mass is a unit of mass used in the Imperial, United States customary and other systems of measurement...
of food when the church could not afford to pay him. The church grew slowly, including some whites, numbering 40 members by 1886.
Amanda Foster died in 1904 at the age of 98. The wave of southern blacks that her husband had anticipated finally materialized in the years afterwards, and during the Great Migration
Great Migration (African American)
The Great Migration was the movement of 6 million blacks out of the Southern United States to the Northeast, Midwest, and West from 1910 to 1970. Some historians differentiate between a Great Migration , numbering about 1.6 million migrants, and a Second Great Migration , in which 5 million or more...
the church served as a community center for new arrivals in the Tarrytown area, helping them acclimate to an urban lifestyle.
The 20th century saw the first physical alterations to the church building, as its limited finances in turn limited what could be done to stave off deterioration. In the 1930s the original roof was replaced. The Meadowstone coating was applied to the sides and rear in the 1950s. The following decade the rear wing was added, expanding the available space in both the sanctuary and meeting room, and the original minister's apartment was converted into an auditorium
Auditorium
An auditorium is a room built to enable an audience to hear and watch performances at venues such as theatres. For movie theaters, the number of auditoriums is expressed as the number of screens.- Etymology :...
. Pastor Madison McRae continued the church's activist traditions, leading protests against housing discrimination and persuading the Tarrytown Fire Department to hire more African-Americans.