St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, founded in 1809, is one of the country’s oldest black parishes. From its origins in Lower Manhattan, the church moved uptown several times, following the black community and seeking safety from sporadic violence such as the race riot of 1900. Around the turn of the century, church rector Hutchens Chew Bishop began buying Harlem rental properties, evicting whites and renting to blacks. With the income, he bought land on 134th Street and hired black architect Vertner Tandy to design a new building. The impressive Gothic structure provided a spiritual and community home for black parishioners in Harlem.

Saint Philip’s Protestant Episcopal Church ARCHITECT: Tandy & Foster DATE: 1910-11 STYLE: Neo-Gothic, Church St. Philip’s Protestant Episcopal Church is the fourth home of New York City’s first African-American congregation of Protestant Episcopalians. From its beginnings as the African Episcopal Catechetical Institution in the City of New York shortly after the American Revolution, St. Philip’s was established as its own parish in 1818 under the leadership of Bishop John Henry Hobart and the Reverend Peter Williams, Jr. St. Philip’s long and inspiring chronicle of religious and social activism adds a depth to our national history not generally acknowledged. The movement of St. Philip’s congregation northward, beginning in lower Manhattan, to the present location in Harlem, reflects the residential patterns of New York City’s African-American population. When the Reverend Hutchens Chew Bishop purchased residential property in Harlem in 1908 on behalf of St. Philip’s and the church building was constructed at its present location, St. Philip’s became one of the first institutions to attract African-Americans to Harlem. St. Philip’s Church building was designed in the neo-Gothic style by the firm of Tandy & Foster. The design of the facade, a response to certain liturgical requirements, incorporates fourteenth-century English, or Perpendicular, Gothic elements in contrasting orange Roman brick and cast-stone aggregate. Vertner W. Tandy was the first African-American architect to be registered in the State of New York and George Washington Foster, Jr., was among the first African-Americans to practice within the architectural profession in the United States. St. Philip’s has continued its nearly two-hundred-year tradition of service to its congregation and community, addressing the spiritual needs of its members and providing a variety of social programs.

Once called the "richest Negro church in America," St. Philip's Episcopal Church is also one of the oldest black congregations in New York. The church was organized in 1818 by, among others, Peter Williams Jr., a passionate political activist, and abolitionist. Many of the parishioners of St. Philip's were members of New York's extremely small nineteenth-century black elite. Located since 1886 in the infamous Tenderloin neighborhood on the middle west side of Manhattan, St. Philip's acquired a new church site on the south side of West 134th Street near Seventh Avenue in 1909. (The church also purchased ten apartment houses on West 135th Street that had previously been restricted to whites. When the congregation began its move to Harlem, St. Philip's evicted the white tenants and made the apartments available to blacks. For half a century, rent from those apartments subsidized the St. Philip's endowment). One of the architects of the church, which opened in 1911, was Vertner Woodson Tandy, the first black architect registered in New York and designer of Madam C. J. Walker's townhouse/hair parlor.