The Dyson Foundation of Millbrook has awarded a $10,000 grant to the Newburgh Preservation Association for a feasible utilization study for the adaptive re-use of Newburgh’s landmark former Dutch Reformed Church.

The grant will be matched by the City of Newburgh and NPA.

City and NPA officials yesterday met with their consultants for the study, Vince Ferrandino of Ferrandino & Associates of Elmsford, New York, and Stephen Tilly of Stephen Tilly Architects of Dobbs Ferry. The study will take two to three months.

Hoekema: "concerts ... weddings"

Mayor Nicholas Valentine said restoring the church is the right thing to do. “This building is one of the last of its kind in this country and it’s our charge, it is our responsibility, as both public officials and as private citizens to make sure this building succeeds and gets back to the grandeur that it once was.”

According to NPA board member James Hoekema, the study will propose options for a private-public partnership that includes a financially self-supporting business plan, defined public benefits, and the restoration and continued preservation of the former church.

The facility could be used for public gatherings and other purposes, he said. “We could see concerts; we could see any variety of public events,” he said. It could also be used for private functions, fundraisers, weddings; “these are the kinds of things that tend to bring in revenue.”

Designed in 1835 by Alexander Jackson Davis, the temple-like Greek-Revival structure, which closed in 1967, was named this year as one of the “100 Most Endangered Sites” in the world by the World Monuments Fund – a list that has included the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, and the entire country of Iraq. In 2001 the U.S. Department of Interior named the Dutch Reformed Church a National Historic Landmark, its highest level of importance.