A 'Living Link' To Yorkville's Past Is Being Demolished, Preservationists Say

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Demolition is underway at the former St. Elizabeth of Hungary Church on East 83rd Street, clearing the way for a seven-story apartment building, according to city records.

But for Yorkville, the demolition marks the end of a 130-year chapter in the neighborhood's immigrant history, nonprofit Friends of the Upper East Side said.

"Another living link to Yorkville’s past is being lost," Friends of the Upper East Side wrote in a statement.

The church, located at 213 East 83rd St. between Second and Third avenues, was built in 1893 and long served as a spiritual and cultural hub for German and Slovak immigrants in the neighborhood, according to the neighborhood preservation nonprofit.

Department of Buildings filings show an 85-foot-tall, seven-story condominium building will rise in place of the church. The plans call for a 27,171.5-square-foot structure containing nine apartments, according to the city filings.

"The new building will be significantly larger than what was there," Nuha Ansari, the executive director of the Friends of the Upper East Side, told Patch.

Despite two pushes to landmark the church, most recently in 2024 by Ansari's team and a coalition of neighbors, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission declined to grant the church individual landmark status.

"These cultural and religious spaces for gathering and community are being seen as not sufficiently significant for preservation — and that’s really sad," Ansari said. "As far as we’re concerned, significance isn’t just about monumentality. It’s about the cultural memory embodied in these buildings."

Ansari said the church’s central location and open interior could have made it a candidate for adaptive reuse, potentially as a community space or a cultural venue that maintained elements of its historic character.

"We envisioned cultural or community programming — something not so far from its original use," Ansari said, noting programs like the Center at West Park, an affordable arts center that was recently evicted from its Upper West Side church.

"Community spaces are few and far between, and this would have been perfect for that kind of use," Ansari said.

Ansari said preservationists are growing concerned that historic buildings from Yorkville's past as a German immigrant community are being replaced with luxury condos, like the Doelger building, which will be replaced with a 37-story tower on Third Avenue and East 84th Street.

"If Yorkville is to maintain any meaningful connection to the communities that built it, preservation must be proactive rather than reactive," Friends of the Upper East Side said. "Otherwise, its history will survive only in photographs and footnotes, while its physical legacy disappears, one demolition at a time."

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