St. Philip's Protestant Episcopal Church

St. Philip's was organized as a Black congregation of Episcopalians in lower Manhattan during 1818 and began its slow migration uptown toward Harlem following the Civil War. In 1886 they moved to West 25th Street, renting a former Presbyterian church which they purchased a year later. Three architects interviewed to remodel that building--William Appleton Potter, Herman Kreitler and Wood--but the project went to Kreitler, about whom I know nothing. Had WHW received this commission, the remodeled St. Philip's would have been among the first three or four of Wood's ecclesiastical commissions.