Church for Sale

In 2008, the congregation of St. John's Lutheran Church sold their church building at the corner of Sixth and Columbia streets and merged with the congregation of Emanuel Lutheran Church, whose place of worship was located at Sixth and Union streets. In the summer of 2010, the lovely wooden Emanuel Lutheran Church, designed by local architect Michael J. O'Connor and included in Arthur Baker's handsome book Wooden Churches: Columbia County Legacy, was covered in vinyl siding.

Photo: Arthur Baker, Wooden Churches

The church got a lot of attention on Gossips that summer because the vinyl siding project managed to elude the Historic Preservation Commission and move forward without a certification of appropriateness.

Now the vinyl-clad church is for sale, with an asking price of $1.1 million. (In 2008, St. John's Lutheran Church sold for $410,000. It has changed hands a couple of times since, most recently in December 2020, when it sold for $1.4 million.) There's no word on any future plans for the congregation.

Yesterday, 94.3Lite fm did a feature on the church: "Stunning Hudson Valley Church for Sale Offers Unlimited Possibilities." Let's hope the first thing the new owner decides to do is remove the vinyl siding.

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