The Historic Walden United Methodist Church is located on West Main Street (New York State Route 52) in Walden, New York, United States. It was desanctified in 2013 and sold by the congregation on November 24, 2014. The current location is at 1206 New York State Route 52, Walden, New York, United States. Ground was broken on a new House of Worship in September 2019 and was completed in 2022.
The historic church is a brick building constructed in the late 19th century, for a congregation dating to 1817. Primarily in the late Victorian Gothic architectural style, its complex massing and decoration include elements of other contemporary modes such as Romanesque Revival. Its ornate interior, originally built in the Akron Plan, reflects changing thinking regarding church interior design from the era of its construction.
It has survived mostly intact to the present. The current building incorporates part of an earlier church on the same site built in 1840 for another church. In the early 20th century a parsonage was built next door, and other facilities were built later in the century to the south. Due to increasing maintenance costs, the congregation voted to move to the new site and build another church there. In 2008 the historic church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Building
The church's lot is located at the southeast corner of West Main and Pine streets, on the western edge of downtown, on the opposite corner of the same large block from St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, also listed on the National Register. The ground slopes gently west towards the Wallkill River. The church's main bell tower rises well above tree level, making the church a prominent aspect of the village skyline when viewed from the west.
There are three buildings on the property: the church (the only contributing resource to the listing), its parsonage to the east and a rental property to the west, all facing on West Main. A parking lot with its entrance on Pine Street is behind the buildings, along with a fenced-in playground. In front is a small lawn, sloping gently to the sidewalk, with a large mature tree and shrubbery on the side.
Exterior
The dark red painted brick exterior of the church is complemented by black asphalt roofing and rough-hewn bluestone courses. It has three sections: a fellowship hall on the east, central bell tower and worship section on the west. They create a north (front) facade that starts with the three-bay gabled roof. Tall Gothic arched windows, the center one larger than those on the flanks, with bluestone sills and keystones, are centered in the first story, with a pair of smaller double-hung sash windows in the apex, set off by a brickwork course.
At the northeast corner is a tower. Six stone steps and a railing lead to its ground-floor entrance, with paired batten doors in a Gothic opening with a similar treatment as the fellowship hall windows. Above it is a stained glass transom and small lozenge-shaped window above. Decorative corbeling marks the roofline and the transition to a pyramidal roof with finial.
The ground floot of the three-stage bell tower has a Gothic door similar to, but larger, than the northeast tower. On either side are corner buttresses. They rise to the bluestone course that sets off the second stage, and also serves as the sill for a group of three small sash windows. The third stage harbors the bell, with large arched louvered openings rising from another belt course, split by a third at the impost. Above the corbeled roofline, the octagonal spire rises, topped by a cross and set off with four small pyramids at the corners, to 100 feet (30 m) high.
At the worship space, a three-sided steeply pitched gabled section projects from the pyramid-roofed main block. The wall spaces on the bay have large windows similar to those on the fellowship hall. Those on the side sections are subdivided into two smaller arched windows below the impost, and two small windows are located in the gable apex. At the extreme west is a third entry, a projecting gabled vestibule with similar doors leading to a white wooden wheelchair ramp.