For generations, the black and white Tudor-style church on North Lane, overlooking Glen Cove, has served as an unofficial landmark, recognizable even to people who left the city decades ago. Now, 120 years after the building was constructed, city officials are considering making that status official.
The City Council held a public hearing Aug. 25 to consider designating the former First Presbyterian Church as a landmark. A second hearing is scheduled for Sept. 22. According to the city’s landmark inventory, there are 17 officially designated landmarks and seven additional properties with protected status. The church is the only property currently listed with a pending landmark application.
The First Presbyterian Church congregation held its final service on Jan. 11, 2025, after years of declining attendance and financial struggles made it increasingly difficult to maintain the congregation and historic building. The congregation that purchased the property this year, Iglesias Apostoles Y Profetas Emanuel Efisios 2:20 — The congregation that purchased the property [when], Iglesia Apóstoles y Profetas Emanuel, a Spanish-speaking evangelical congregation, supports the designation, according to city Historian Dave Nieri, a member of the city’s Landmark Preservation Commission.
Nieri, who attended the church as a child, told the council that few buildings are as closely associated with the city. “If somebody posts a picture of the First Presbyterian Church, people that haven’t lived here in 40 years know immediately that that’s Glen Cove,” he said. “I would say that the First Presbyterian Church is the most identifiable landmark.”
The First Presbyterian church was founded in 1869, on Hendrick Avenue, before moving to North Lane in 1905. The current building was constructed in 1906, making it 120 years old, according to Robert Labaw, an architect and the chairman of the Landmark Preservation Commission. Labaw urged the council to advance the designation, saying that the church meets the city’s age requirements and has long been recognized for its architectural and community significance.
The Presbytery’s website describes the building as a “striking community landmark,” Labaw noted. Despite that description, however, the building has never been officially designated.
Labaw explained two years ago, the church was granted temporary protected status intended to halt possible development for roughly six months while officials determined whether it qualified as a landmark. But the application never advanced to a final designation.
“I strongly urge you to consider this, and let’s move forward with this application,” Labaw told the council.
Mayor Pamela Panzenbeck also expressed support, citing her family’s long connection to the church. “If anybody ever tried to do anything to it, my cousins and I would all be laying down in front of a bulldozer,” Panzenbeck said. “We’re just so happy that this is happening.”
Nieri said he renewed the idea of landmarking the church roughly two years ago, concerned that it could be demolished for development if it were sold. The former congregation had struggled to afford repairs to the roof and other maintenance, he said.
Iglesias Apostoles had leased space there for roughly 30 years before acquiring it. Its willingness to preserve the exterior made the landmarking effort less complicated, Nieri said. “One thing that’s good, which you don’t often run into, is that the new owners are in favor of landmarking it,” he said. “They realize that it’s one of the most identifiable visual landmarks in Glen Cove.”
An individual-landmark designation would primarily protect the building’s exterior. If its owners wanted to replace windows, change the roofline or make other significant exterior alterations, they would first need approval from the city’s Landmark Preservation Commission before the Building Department could authorize the work.
For Kristin Michelsen Brown, who lived in Glen Cove for 50 years and now lives in Suffolk County, the church’s importance extends beyond its architecture. Her grandparents, Barbara and George Hagerman, were members, and she believes her uncle, Paul Hagerman, was the first baby baptized there in 1949. Her parents, Valerie and Spencer Michelsen, were married there, as were Brown and her brother. The family celebrated weddings and baptisms and mourned loved ones at funerals in the sanctuary.
Brown was baptized there in 1968, attended Sunday school and later became a teacher, deacon and one of the congregation’s youngest elders as a teenager. Her mother, a nurse, volunteered with the homeless shelter that operated at the church, checking overnight guests’ vital signs and blood-alcohol levels. Her father, a retired Nassau County Sheriff’s Department sergeant, stayed overnight to help keep guests safe.
Brown attended the congregation’s final service in January 2025. She vividly remembers ceremonially returning the church keys to the Presbytery. Her mother, who died in 2019, had often carried those keys, because she regularly opened the building for deliveries and visitors.
“I just put my head down on the pew, and I just started to cry,” Brown recalled. “Those were very important times in my life — funerals and weddings and baptisms.”
Brown strongly supports the landmark proposal, describing the church as an irreplaceable part of Glen Cove’s landscape. During parades and events on Forest Avenue, she said, the building often appears in the background, “just kind of sitting up, keeping watch over everyone.”
Debi Johnston Baker said she had no personal connection to the church, she admired it for years. “I would love to see this beautiful historic church considered for landmark designation,” Baker said. It is, she added, “a welcoming, gorgeous building that sets the tone for the Glen Cove I grew up knowing.”
