A five-alarm fire at a historic Queens church may finally reveal the answer to a decades-old question: Is the “George Washington of Astoria” buried in the backyard?
Wealthy fur trader Stephen A. Halsey founded the Village of Astoria in 1839, the same year the First Reformed Church of Astoria opened on what is now 12th Street.
Halsey died in 1875, but where he was buried was a mystery. Historians long suspected the church was his final resting place, but no grave could be found. That changed in 2001, when congregants cutting back weeds for a sunflower garden came upon a 6-foot-tall obelisk that had fallen and become buried in the dirt.
The founder of Astoria, Stephen A. Halsey.
Historians thought the obelisk marked Halsey’s grave, but church leaders opted not to start digging.
Now, a standoff is brewing between the city, which has said the First Reformed Church should be demolished, and preservationists hoping to save the historic building. Historians see an opportunity to solve the mystery.
“Within the historic little community, it's like one of those sort of burning questions,” said Ava Vitali, an archeologist and president of the board of the Greater Astoria Historical Society. “Maybe the only good thing to come out of the fire might be the possibility to answer that question. Any work that's done on the site will have to consider the archeological remains.”
Halsey is credited with planning the Village of Astoria and raising money for infrastructure like schools and factories, three local historians said in interviews. It was his idea to name the village after John Jacob Astor — the wealthiest man in the country at the time — in hopes it would encourage the business magnate to invest in the nascent town.
First Reformed Church of Astoria was founded in 1839. In-person services did not resume after the pandemic.
Astor ultimately only donated $500 toward a women’s seminary and never set foot in the village named after him.
For now, longtime Astoria residents are focused on thwarting the city’s plan to tear down the church.
Kevin Harris was a deacon of the church for 17 years, until 2023. He lives directly across the street and has been a member of the congregation since he was 9. Harris said that the day after the fire, he retrieved a Bible that was still sitting on the pulpit.
“This is history and if you demolish it while it's there, you're throwing over 150, almost 200 years in the garbage,” Harris said. “You don’t let the oldest church in Astoria get torn down.”
In 2001 congregants found a buried obelisk believed to have once marked the grave for the founder of Astoria.
The buildings department said church leaders agreed it should be torn down. But Harris disputed that all were on board with the plan.
In-person services haven’t been held at the church since the pandemic. The congregation had become too small, and the building fell into disrepair.
An FDNY spokesperson said the fire's cause is still under investigation. Five firefighters suffered minor injuries during the blaze.
Now, the fellowship hall that hosted Sunday school is a hollow wooden shell. The sanctuary is full of debris and is missing a roof. Yet the church steeple and much of the main brick building still stand. Residents and historians say there is a lot left to save.
“I don't see this building being eligible to be torn down. It’s not a lost cause in any stretch of the imagination,” said Bob Singleton, executive director of the Greater Astoria Historical Society. ”When they built buildings in these days, they built them to last.”
Singleton isn’t expecting much will be left of Halsey, if archaeologists get a chance to dig once the site's future is determined.
“Since he died almost 200 years ago, maybe we'd find some teeth,” Singleton said. “I do have a feeling that he's there. We disturb graves all the time, but [people back then] didn't, it was a sacred kind of a thing.”
