The names on its windowsill plaques are of Kingston’s foundational black families. Its baptismal font was given in memory of George Henry Sharpe, a general whose pioneering intel gathering greatly helped the Union forces win the Civil War. A1907 marble plaque honors the finance committee who enabled the church to clear its debt. All around its interior, the AME Zion Church of Kingston transmits its long history in the Midtown neighborhood. It speaks of the commitment of the people who founded the church before the Civil War and rebuilt this gathering place after a fire in the 1920s. The fire decimated the sanctuary, but the foundation survived.
A group of free and formerly enslaved black residents founded and incorporated AME Zion Church of Kingston in 1848. More than seven decades later, when the blaze destroyed the wooden church down to its foundation in 1926, the congregation rebuilt a brick and stone Gothic-style church, reopening in 1929. They carried on — and so will the church’s present congregants.
AME Zion Church of Kingston is one of 30 historic black churches in the United States to receive a 2025 grant from the Preserving Black Churches project, a component of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. AME Zion Church of Kingston, at 26 Franklin Street, has been a center of community, faith and social justice efforts for generations. Its members engaged in abolitionist and civil rights movement activism, a legacy that inspires church members today. In its 177th year, which the church will celebrate next month, it is the oldest black church congregation in Ulster County and one of the oldest continuous black congregations in the region.
“The history is beautiful,” says the Rev. Mary Shelley Bruce, who has been the pastor of AME Zion Church of Kingston since 2017. The Rev. Bruce says that the small congregation was “struggling a might.” Yet the church has continued to minister to the community in Kingston by aiding the homeless, providing a warming center at times during cold months and giving out food to those in need.
The $100,000 grant is a major and crucial boost toward the congregation’s much-needed initiative to preserve and restore the building. Preservation is, after all, an action of faith, one that says a place from the past is worth saving and restoring for the future. To the Rev. Bruce, the Preserving Black Churches grant “means to you that God answers prayers for help.” She adds that the grant signifies that “the history won’t stop with us, so we want the blessing to continue.”
Like many historic spiritual sites across the country, this church needs much work, including to a roof that is partially covered in tarp, furnace repairs, energy system upgrades and more. Still, the grant is a major support as it will allow AME Zion Church to plan the preservation and restoration work in steps.
The Preserving Black Churches program grants began in 2023 with the aim to uplift immensely important sacred sites that face challenges such as deferred maintenance and insufficient funding. In announcing the grants, the program stated that historically black churches “serve as houses of worship, safe havens, social centers and cultural laboratories, and provide vital social services that uplift their communities.”
With the local church, this grant will fund capital planning focused on preserving and upgrading the building, procuring professional expertise, and creating improved ADA accessibility, according to Maisha Tyler, AME Zion Church secretary, and Rashida Tyler, the pastor’s steward of the church, who are sisters. The work to document the congregation’s and church building’s history has been very challenging, through various archival sources, according to Maisha, who has academic credentials in public policy; urban planning; and community planning and economic development. Rashida Tyler is the Deputy executive director of the New York State Council of Churches.
The founding of the AME Zion Church of Kingston had its roots in an era during which black Methodists sought religious autonomy from the predominantly white Methodist Episcopal Church. The African Methodist Episcopal Church had its origin in New York City, where in 1796, several black congregants of the John Street Methodist Church in New York City left the church and formed their own independent congregation. Black worshippers in the John Street congregation could not share in leadership roles and were relegated to sitting in the balcony and receiving communion after white worshippers.
Officially established as a separate denomination in 1821, the AME Zion Church was a leader in the antislavery movement and advocated for social justice, reform and black and women’s empowerment. Several of the most prominent black abolitionists, including Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and Eliza Ann Gardner, were members of the AME Zion Church denomination.
In this environment of spiritual self-governance and reform, the AME Zion Church of Kingston was established in 1848. With a land grant from a wealthy black couple, Sarah-Ann Hasbrouck and her husband, Alexander, free and formerly enslaved black residents founded the church in a wooden building at the junction of Union and Bowery Avenue (present-day Broadway and Franklin Street). The congregation moved to 26 Franklin Street in 1863, where its members constructed a new wooden church.
In the mid-19th century, the congregation established the Mount Zion Cemetery on South Wall Street as a burial place for individuals and families who were part of Kingston’s African American community. Both the AME Zion Church of Kingston and Mount Zion Cemetery were listed on the National and State Registers of Historic Places on March 3, 2021.
By the 1920s, the church was firmly established in Kingston’s black community. Around 1924, the Rev. Ebenezer O. Clarke, the church pastor, initiated discussions with architect Thomas Rice about replacing the wooden church with a building that would provide spaces for both religious services and recreation, according to architectural historian William B. Rhoads in Kingston, New York: The Architectural Guide. Fire destroyed the wooden edifice in 1926, so a rebuilt church became a necessity. The building committee was comprised of influential black and white residents. Rice, whose other architectural work included the municipal building at 23-25 East O’Reilly Street, donated his services, Rhodes wrote.
Following the laying of a cornerstone in 1927, the congregation was able to make its new religious home by 1929. The church is of the Gothic Revival-style church that one could see in the ecclesiastical sites of small towns, cities and in the countryside in the early decades of the 20th century. The brick building with stone features has round-arched Romanesque and pointed-arch Gothic windows, a central square bell tower, and a stone inlay panel above the central doorway with the inscription, “A.M.E. Zion Church Est. 1848.”
A historic sacred place such as AME Zion Church of Kingston is a physical, spiritual and community presence. This is evident as Rachida Tyler and Maisha Tyler point out various features as we walk around the interior and talk about the church’s outreach and activities. The plaques on the church windowsills have various names of black families and are from different time periods. One example is “Donated by Fitzgerald Family.” The plaque names are of foundational black families in Kingston, as Rashida Tyler notes. Various surnames present in church history and on gravestones at Mount Zion Cemetery are of enslaved Africans and their descendants who had the surnames of French Huguenot, Dutch and British enslavers, such as Hasbrouck and Vandemark.
Throughout history, as was true of so many in their parent denomination, the members and leaders of AME Zion Church of Kingston were activists in the important issues of the day. The Rev. Jeremiah B. Smith, who was the pastor from 1882-1887, had been an antislavery writer and a Civil War soldier. After the war, he continued his advocacy of black advancement through his writings in various periodicals. During the 1950s and 1960s, the church hosted many NAACP meetings.
The church flock is smaller today, yet its spiritual presence and community endeavors remain integral as it embraces the tradition of seeking social justice, caring for the neighborhood and providing charitable help to those in need. This can range from offering a food pantry during specific Sundays to its first community Garden clean-up day in March. In a partnership with other groups such as Catholic Charities for a couple of years, the church was an Ulster County warming center, where people could find a warm shelter and meals. The mission to respond to the need of people for food, support during illness, housing help and spiritual ministry is fundamental to the desire to upgrade the building and grow the congregation.
In a church that has been resilient for more than one-and-three-quarters of a century, there is undoubtedly faith. Speaking of the grant from the Preserving Black Churches program, the Rev. Bruce evinces a definite trust in the journey. “We have to be respectful for right now, the blessings of right now,” she observes.
Part of this gratitude is gathering to celebrate, as AME Zion Church of Kingston will do when the congregation marks the church’s 177th anniversary soon. On June 21, from 12-3 p.m., the church will hold its anniversary celebration. It will include friends and family day and pastor appreciation day. As the Rev. Bruce says, the community is welcome and the congregation would appreciate assistance with the event.
It’s the kind of community relationship that a restored building will make easier. In announcing being chosen for the grant from the Preserving Black Churches project on its Facebook page, the congregation’s post said, “We look forward to beginning the restoration process and working with our community to ensure that this sacred space continues to thrive for future generations.”
Or, as the Rev. Bruce aptly says, “We want to make this a comfortable place for people to come and know they stand on the shoulders of the great people who have come before us.”
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