German Reformed Sanctity Church Parsonage
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German Reformed Sanctity Church Parsonage
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South (front) facade, 2013
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| Location | Germantown, New York |
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| Coordinates | 42°8′30″N 73°52′57″W / 42.14167°N 73.88250°WCoordinates: 42°8′30″N 73°52′57″W / 42.14167°N 73.88250°W |
| Area | 1.3 acres (5,300 m2) |
| Built | c. 1746 |
| NRHP reference # | 76001209 |
| Added to NRHP | January 30, 1976 |
The German Reformed Sanctity Church Parsonage, also known as the First Reformed Church Parsonage, is located on Maple Avenue in Germantown, New York, United States. It is a wood, brick and stone building dating to the mid-18th century, the oldest building in the town of Germantown. In 1976 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
At the time of its construction the area, known as East Camp, supported a thriving Palatine German population. The residents were either refugees who had fled to England during the War of the Spanish Succession and been resettled in the Hudson Valley as part of a failed scheme to produce naval stores in the Hudson Valley, or their descendants; many later generations in turn moved on to other areas. The church had been established shortly after the first Palatines arrived; the parsonage was built in the 1740s. Two decades later it was expanded to its current size.
The church sold the house in the early 19th century; its pastors continued to live there for another quarter-century. Throughout most of the later 19th and 20th centuries it housed different local families, primarily African American. By the 1940s it required extensive renovations that added modern amenities.
Today it is the property of the town of Germantown. It houses the town's history department. An archaeological dig in the vicinity by a professor at nearby Bard College has yielded many artifacts, some of which are on display inside.
The parsonage sits on a 1.3-acre (5,300 m2) lot on the north side of Maple Avenue, roughly a thousand feet (300 m) east of New York State Route 9G, on the northern edge of the developed areas of central Germantown. Its neighborhood is rural in character, with two farms to the west on either side of Maple and houses on similarly-sized lots to the east. On the north is a large woodlot; a smaller one to the south buffers the baseball diamonds and fields of nearby Palatine Park. The terrain slopes gently westward to the Hudson River, a half-mile (800 m) in that direction.
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