FAITH · HISTORICAL MARKER
Old Broad Street Presbyterain Church
Faith
Old Broad Street Presbyterian Church was built in the meeting house form as a rectangular brick church with its pulpit on the north gable end wall, a U-shaped balcony on the other sides, a Broad Street façade marked by Flemish bond brickwork and a large Palladian window, and an interior with colonial pew boxes facing a central raised pulpit, Federal period paneling on the pulpit and pews, Federal detailing on the wood balcony railing and decorative plaster ceiling, and Georgian period balustrades on the stairs. Its only known alteration was the installation of a chimney and heating stoves in 1809, and no electrical, plumbing, or mechanical systems were ever installed. The cemetery, in use since 1792, contains the graves of notable figures including one of New Jersey’s first U.S. Senators and an early governor of the state. The land was donated in 1791 by the son of a Quaker, the congregation applied for recognition as a separate body in October 1792, and by December the walls and roof had been completed. Construction resumed in 1794 with carpenter Ezekiel Foster after funds were raised through a state-approved lottery, and the church was dedicated on May 17, 1795. A murder trial of John Patterson was held there in 1797, a board fence was erected around the graveyard in 1798, painting was completed in 1799, Venetian blinds were installed in 1803, and the congregation moved to a new, larger church in 1836. The founders wrote in 1792 that the people of Bridge Town and its neighborhood had lacked a house of public worship, had grown in number, and had agreed by voluntary subscriptions to build one for worship according to the doctrine and forms of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. The church belongs to a group of Delaware Valley brick churches inspired by religious buildings in Philadelphia and, though later than most comparable structures, embodies the full flowering of high-style Georgian architecture there while also reflecting eighteenth-century Presbyterian practice. Its remarkable preservation owes much to its near abandonment after 1836, when the congregation relocated to the more populous east side of Bridgeton and no later improvements altered the building or burying ground. In 2009, the roof structure was restored and the wood shingle roof was replaced with support in part from the Garden State Preservation Trust, administered by the New Jersey Historic Trust and the State of New Jersey. It was listed on the New Jersey Register of Historic Places in 1973 and on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
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