Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church stands at 85 South Oxford Street, between Lafayette Avenue and Fulton Street in the heart of Brooklyn's Fort Greene neighborhood. Organized in 1857 on the eve of the Civil War and long led by abolitionists, the congregation has kept the same address since its first pastor pressed for a sanctuary large enough to seat 2,000 people. Today the parish describes itself as a "dynamic, multi-racial, multi-cultural, intergenerational church" that welcomes Christians of every denomination, people of other faiths, and those who profess none at all. It is one of the most musically distinctive congregations in New York City and a well-known gathering point for community organizing in Fort Greene.
The Sanctuary, the Chapel, and the Ceiling Project
The brownstone church was designed by Grimshaw & Morrill and completed in 1862, with additions in 1885 and 1917. Built in the Romanesque Revival style, it is widely considered one of the finest early church structures in Brooklyn. The sanctuary reflects the Reformed auditorium tradition, with curved pews facing the pulpit and seventeen Tiffany Studios stained-glass windows that include the eight east and west wall windows that one parish historian has arranged, perhaps, around the seven chakhras of kundalini yoga plus a window based on Raphael's Transfiguration.
In 1976, a bequest from Elise Woodward Stutzer commissioned the "Cloud of Witness" mural by Pratt Institute graduate Hank Prussing. Wrapping the sanctuary, the mural photographs neighborhood residents of Fort Greene and draws a deliberate bridge between the grandeur of the Tiffany windows and the everyday humanity of the surrounding block.
The instrument anchoring the worship space is a four-manual, fifty-six rank pipe organ built by the Austin Organ Company in 1910, with a mahogany case from the earlier Hook & Hastings organ of 1886. The console was lowered from the balcony to the sanctuary floor in 1976 to bring the organ closer to the people in the pews.
In August 2023 an eight-by-four-foot section of the plaster ceiling crashed to the sanctuary floor, and the space has been closed to the public since. Sunday worship moved next door into the smaller chapel worship space, and a $3.5 million "Opening Doors" capital campaign is now underway to restore the ceiling, complete ADA accessibility, and rebuild the pipe organ, which after two decades of repairs remains only 30 percent functional.
Sunday Worship at Eleven
Sunday morning worship begins at 11:00 a.m. and is the visible center of life in the parish. The liturgy is "typical of churches in the Reformed (or Presbyterian) tradition and rooted in the practices of ancient Christianity," blended with elements drawn from the congregation's many cultural and ethnic traditions. Music is woven throughout the service and is, in the church's own words, "amazing and not to be missed."
Worship is live-streamed on Facebook and YouTube at @lapcbrooklyn, and a deep video archive of recent services sits on the same channels. Visitors can join in person at the lobby entrance at 85 South Oxford Street, where they are met by an Usher Team that distributes bulletins, name tags, and helps them find a seat.
The church follows the lectionary through the seasons of the Christian year, with named Sundays such as Pentecost, Ascension Sunday, Pride Sunday, and Homecoming Sunday marking the rhythm of the year. Liturgists, drawn from the congregation, lead parts of the service each week, and teens from the youth ministry lead on the second Sunday of every month.
A Ministry of Music in Three Choirs and a Pipe Organ
The music program is built around three ensembles. The Lafayette Choir, under Director of Music and Organist J. David Williams, sings Anglican cathedral music, American anthems, spirituals, psalms, and new compositions. The Lafayette Inspirational Ensemble, founded in 1991 under Oliver W. Williams Jr. and now led by Janis Russell, is a multi-racial, interfaith gospel choir that sings on the second Sunday of each month and at Christmas and Easter. The Lafayette Band, co-directed by Joylynn Holder and Charlie Holder-Foster, performs during worship once a month from October through May.
The Ensemble's 35-year history has carried it far beyond the parish. It sang in Donald Byrd's Harlem Nutcracker at BAM in the 1990s, on a bill with then-President Clinton and Nelson Mandela on the steps of City Hall, twice at St Patrick's Cathedral (once for a service marking his 25th anniversary as pope, live to Rome), and on the soundtrack of the 2007 film Body of War. "Everybody who knew Oliver loved him," Janis Russell recalled. "He was funny. He was smart. And he was just very charismatic and just very knowledgeable and very, very loving, very accepting, very open." Russell, a contralto whose career has run from jazz and blues to country and classical, took over the Ensemble in 2001 after Oliver Williams's death.
Jazz Vespers, curated by Craig Anthony Bannister, are held on selected Sunday afternoons through the year. The format is part scripture, part poetry, part short message, and part concert, an evening service built around the music itself.
The Music Ministry also produces the Lafayette LIVE! series on the front patio, where the building's new Pride Progress and Black Lives Matter flags, each ten by twelve feet, fly overhead. Concerts, dance performances, protest sing-alongs, Broadway carolers at Christmas, and the Ensemble's annual Spring Gospel Concert spill out onto the bluestone patio that was finished as part of the Foundation Stabilization Project completed in August 2023.
Children, Youth, and the Christian Education Ministry
The Christian Education Committee oversees a full slate of programs for children and teens. Free childcare staffed by adult providers and volunteer members is available during the service for children through kindergarten, in a room adjacent to the worship space. Sunday School for children in kindergarten through sixth grade runs during the service and includes a Bible lesson, arts and crafts, games, and time for joys and concerns.
The middle and high school youth group meets monthly for sharing, volunteering, and planning social justice activities. Every other year the pastor leads a Confirmation Class that meets monthly from September through May, exploring faith, service, and membership in the Presbyterian Church. A Christmas Pageant and a Palm Sunday service give young people additional ways to participate in worship. Vacation Bible School and a Youth Walk-A-Thon have appeared in past programming.
Adults find Bible studies and book groups at the church, with details shared through the weekly newsletter sent on Saturday mornings and through the Adult Programs contact at the church.
Social Justice at the Center of Parish Life
Since its founding as an abolitionist church, LAPC has styled itself as a Matthew 25 congregation, "called to act boldly and compassionatively to serve people who are hungry, oppressed, imprisoned or poor." The Social Justice Committee organizes the work in five major streams.
In Mutual Aid, volunteers support elderly neighbors in the NYCHA Atlantic Terminal Houses through a monthly food share with Community Help in Park Slope, run coat and food drives with Clinton Hill / Fort Greene Mutual Aid, host diaper drives (sizes 4 and 5 are most requested) for immigrant families, and participate in the Welcome Blanket Project with Catholic Charities Refugee Services.
In Immigration Defense and Support, the parish hosts Deportation Defense Rapid Response trainings, business canvassing, walking group meetings, and Know Your Rights trainings for Make the Road New York's volunteer team. The congregation directly supports three asylum seekers, one a mother with two sons from Mexico and two young men from Guinea and Nigeria, with living care, legal proceedings, job search help, and psycho-social support as they work toward self-sufficiency.
Through Advocacy, Civic Engagement and Community Inclusion, LAPC advances racial justice, immigrant support, and civic participation. The flags that fly over the entrance are part of that witness, big enough to stay out of reach of vandals, and renewed in 2025 after four years of weather.
The Voter Action Coalition conducts voter registration drives, nonpartisan voter education workshops, neighborhood outreach, and election information campaigns, including engagement with residents of the Atlantic Terminal and Whitman Houses and with Institutional International Ministries.
LAPC has long shared its space with nonprofit and arts organizations. Current long-time tenants include the Audre Lorde Project, the Business Outreach Center Network, the Fort Greene Park Conservancy, and Irondale theater. Past co-organizations include GreeneHill Food Coop, Common Cause New York, and the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship.
The social justice work is also pastoral. The Prayer Team meets weekly to lift up concerns from the congregation, the neighborhood, and the wider world. Prayers may be submitted through the prayer request form.
Pastoral Care, Funerals, and Other Services
Special services at the church include weddings, baptisms, funerals, and memorials. The sanctuary is currently unavailable for these gatherings because of the ceiling project, and the chapel worship space, with a capacity of 125, is used in its place. The reception hall, capacity 70, is also available. Funerals at LAPC follow the Presbyterian conviction that "in life and in death, we belong to God" and that even a funeral is a service of worship and witness to the resurrection. The pastor meets with the family to plan the service, the music director arranges organ and congregational hymns, and Deacons provide coffee, tea, and light refreshments afterward for members of the church.
Flags, Foundation, and a 167-Year-Old Building
The front flags of the church are themselves a story. The smaller banners that flew over the depot for years were vandalized and torn down. Rather than shrink, the congregation raised funds for two enormous replacement flags, ten by twelve feet, hoisted high above the entrance in May 2021 to declare, in the words of the church, its "beliefs of inclusion, justice, and liberation for all people." Replacement flags were ordered and installed in 2025 after the originals exceeded their expected lifespan.
The bluestone patio below them was finished in August 2023 as part of the $1.2 million Front Foundation Project, which leveraged a $250,000 matching grant from the National Fund for Sacred Places to stabilize the foundation, brick piers, and cornice on the Lafayette Avenue facade. The work is part of a long program of stewardship that, in 1997, repaired the slate roof and removed asbestos; in 2004, with the World Monument Fund, began restoring the Tiffany windows; in 2007, scaffolded the bell tower; and in 2022-2023, rebuilt the front foundation.
Two Centuries of History on South Oxford Street
LAPC's history is, in the church's own words, "one of intrepid witness on behalf of the great social questions of past generations as well as our own." Its first pastor, the abolitionist Theodore Ledyard Cuyler, pressed Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War to end slavery. From its earliest years the pulpit was open to women preachers, including the Welsh temperance advocate Susannah Evans, the Quaker evangelist Sarah Smiley, and the missionary Amanda Berry Smith, a freed slave. In 1871 the Fisk Jubilee Singers presented a concert during their first nationwide tour and returned on later tours.
In 1884 LAPC member Horace Grant Underwood established the first Protestant mission in Korea, supported by his wife, the medical missionary Dr. Lilias Horton Underwood, who became personal physician to Queen Min. In 1901 the congregation supported Hackett Medical College, the first medical college for women in China, founded by Dr. Mary Hannah Fulton. In 1902 the parish backed a home mission in eastern Kentucky that included Witherspoon College, a hospital, a dairy farm, and an agricultural cooperative that pre-dated the New Deal. In 1904 the assistant pastor George Lunn left Brooklyn to advocate for the Social Gospel in Schenectady, was arrested for "inciting to riot" on behalf of striking workers, and went on to become mayor, a U.S. Congressman, and Lieutenant Governor of New York.
The Brooklyn poet Marianne Moore joined LAPC in 1935 with her mother, calling Lafayette Avenue her "church home" where she went for its "spiritual food." In 1970 Marian Anderson visited the parish. In 2003 the Lafayette Inspirational Ensemble sang at St Patrick's Cathedral, with the program live-streamed to Pope John Paul II in Rome.
The church is a member congregation of the Presbytery of New York, part of the Presbyterian Church (USA), and is a More Light congregation of the movement of Presbyterian churches that advocate for the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in the life of the church.
Joining Sunday Worship on Plymouth Street
Sunday worship remains at 11:00 a.m. in the chapel worship space. Visitors are greeted at the lobby entrance at 85 South Oxford Street, between Lafayette Avenue and Fulton Street in Fort Greene. The service is live-streamed on Facebook and YouTube @lapcbrooklyn, and the same channels hold a video archive of recent services, music performances, and Lafayette LIVE! events. The weekly newsletter, sent on Saturday mornings, offers a preview of the upcoming service and a way to sign up for news and involvement. The church office is open Monday through Thursday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and can be reached at 718-625-7515 or info@lapcbrooklyn.org.