I’d often passed this church on Route 9 in the Scarborough section of Briarcliff Manor. It’s an attractive old church and I thought it might be nice to stop by and take a few pictures, but I never did. Then one day I read somewhere that the church was going to close so I thought I’d better get the pictures before someone decided to demolish it.

According to the Scarborough Historic District page on Wikipedia:

Saint Mary’s Episcopal Church, founded in 1839 by William Creighton and incorporated in 1883 as Saint Mary’s Church, Beechwood, is Briarcliff Manor’s oldest church; it was reincorporated in 1945 as Saint Mary’s Church of Scarborough. Its first service was in 1839 in a small schoolhouse on an acre of Creighton’s Beechwood property, at the corner of Albany Post and Sleepy Hollow Roads. The service was led by Creighton’s son-in-law Reverend Edward Nathaniel Meade.

The granite church was built in 1850 by local stonemasons and paid for primarily by Creighton and Meade and thier wealthy neighbors including James Watson Webb, William Aspinwall, and Ambrose Kingsland. The first services there were held on September 21, 1851. The church is in near-original condition, with a design based on the 14th-century Gothic St. Mary’s parish church in Scarborough, England and is the only church with a complete set of John Bolton (brother of William Jay Bolton) stained-glass windows.

The church’s rectory was built in 1931 as a memorial to its first two rectors Creighton and Meade. Notable parishioners included Viola Allen, and Washington Irving. Irving, the author of “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, brought and planted the ivy surrounding the church. He had received it from Walter Scott, from Abbotsford. The ivy of the parish house was brought from the Argonne battlefield, after World War I, by Narcissa Vanderlip. The 200-acre-plus (81 ha) Sleepy Hollow Country Club surrounds the church grounds on three sides.

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On July 5, 2015, Saint Mary’s Episcopal Church closed after 175 years in operation.

William Rockefeller, who lived nearby at Rockwood Hall, was a regular attendee of the church in the last few years of his life.

Taken with a Sony A6000 and 7artisans 25mm f1.8 lens.