The Wood Church of Woodside

An ongoing crime is taking place at the Queens corner of 61st Street and 39th Avenue, and has been for years upon years now. On that corner sits the remnants of a beautiful old Gothic Revival wooden church. It's a lovely building, quaint and endearing, but you wouldn't know it by passing by, as so many people do without looking. That's because St. Paul's Episcopal Church, as it's known, has fallen to near ruin. The white paint job has grown dingy over time. In fact, the whole grounds, surrounding by an inappropriate chain-link fence, is in need of a bath. The lawn is badly tended and strewn with neglected plastic children's play things.

The church was founded in 1874, if you can believe it. (Actually, if you give it a minute's study, it looks like an 1874 church—who builds in wood, anymore? It's just hard to fathom how this relic has survived in unsentimental, super-uglified, housing stock-poor Woodside.)

Naturally, since this is Queens, it has not been landmarked. It ought to be. And it ought to be cleaned up, for Christ's sake.