About Us Worship Get Connected Christian Education Music Art & Architecture Giving Back
 

Bicentennial Year Celebrations: 2006-2007

For its 200th anniversary, St. Michael's Episcopal Church is celebrating the past, present and future of the parish and the community in a 13-month commemoration, from Festival Weekend 2006 to 2007.
 
Since its founding when Thomas Jefferson was president, St. Michael's has St. Michael's has served the community in one location (and three building incarnations) on what is now called Manhattan's Upper West Side.

The Bicentennial honors the legacy of a church that has helped generate new churches and mission activities in New York City and the nation.

St. Michael's is blessed with treasures from the studio of Louis Comfort Tiffany, including a magnificent transept of seven stained-glass windows depicting St. Michael's victory in Heaven, and the mosaic Chapel of the Angels.

Created for the Bicentennial, a History Timeline unfolds a dramatic narrative, illustrated with archive images, on the church's west nave wall, and elsewhere — including, soon, this Web  site.

A Bicentennial Year calendar lists the principal events and activities, including sacred services, an all-community theatrical/musical event called St. Michael's Revels and a solemn procession through the neighborhood to honor St. Jude's Chapel, a ministry to African-Americans on the site of what is now Park West Village.

As one of its Bicentennial activities, the church will restore and reconsecrate the marble altar from St. Jude's Chapel.

Also under way are 200-Minute Bicentennial Retreats and a Bicentennial Acts of Kindness campaign. Plus a "Great Cloud of Witnesses" gala at Synod House on Oct. 5, 2007.

The Bicentennial Committee, working closely with St. Michael's rector, other clergy and staff, has helped marshal the energy of a vibrant community of parishioners, neighbors, friends and extended family.

An important participant in the Bicentennial is St. Michael's Cemetery, founded during the 1850s in the borough of Queens.

In 2003 the Cemetery helped establish a memorial to the Queens firefighters who lost their lives in the 9/11 attacks. In 2006, another memorial was dedicated to the Port Authority Police Department staffers lost on 9/11.

The Cemetery also stages springtime musical events in honor of Scott Joplin, one of its most famous residents, the American composer who wrote "The Entertainer" and "Maple Leaf Rag."

Come and celebrate our Bicentennial with us! You can contribute to the support of the Bicentennial through the 200 Club fund-raising campaign.

You're more than welcome to get involved in the Bicentennial and bring your energy and imagination to this glorious year. Get in touch with the Bicentennial Committee chairs:

The Rev.Stephen Bolle, sbolle@saintmichaelschurch.org

Marianna Klaiman, kmans3@msn.com

John Stickney, stick@nytimes.com
  
HomeDirectionsContact UsSite Map