Briarcliff Manor is home to seven Christian churches and two synagogues; three churches (Holy Innocents Anglican Church, Saint Mary's Episcopal Church and Scarborough Presbyterian Church) are in Scarborough. Other churches in the village are All Saints' Episcopal Church, St. Theresa's Catholic Church, Faith Lutheran Brethren Church and Briarcliff Congregational Church (United Church of Christ). Congregation Sons of Israel, a Conservative synagogue, is in Chilmark. Another Jewish house of worship, Chabad Lubavitch of Briarcliff Manor & Ossining, is at Orchard Road in Briarcliff Manor.[14][64]
Saint Mary's Episcopal Church, founded in 1839 by William Creighton as Saint Mary's Church, Beechwood, is Briarcliff Manor's oldest church; it was reincorporated in 1945 as Saint Mary's Church of Scarborough.[4](p28) The granite church was built by local stonemasons and paid for by Creighton's wealthy neighbors, including Commodore Matthew Perry, James Watson Webb, William Aspinwall, and Ambrose Kingsland.[5](p19)[34] The church is in near-original condition, with a design based on the 14th-century Gothic St. Mary's parish church in Scarborough, England and the only church with a complete set of William Jay Bolton stained-glass windows.[14] The church, built in 1851, is a contributing property to the National Register-listed Scarborough Historic District. The 338-acre (137 ha) Sleepy Hollow Country Club surrounds the church grounds on three sides.[65] Notable parishioners included Commodore Matthew C. Perry and Washington Irving. Irving, author of "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", brought the ivy surrounding the church from Abbotsford (home of Walter Scott).[1]
Scarborough Presbyterian Church, given to the community by Margaret Louisa Vanderbilt Shepard and her husband Colonel Elliott Fitch Shepard (who lived on the nearby Woodlea estate), was the first church in the United States with an electric organ.[14] Built in 1895 and designed by Augustus Haydel (a nephew of Stanford White) and Shepard (a nephew of Elliott Shepard)—who designed the 1899 Fabbri Mansion in Manhattan—the 3-acre (1.2 ha) church property is also part of the Scarborough Historic District.[65][66]
All Saints' Episcopal Church is a stone church also on the National Register of Historic Places. It was founded in 1854 by John David Ogilby, whose summer estate and family home in Ireland were the namesakes of Briarcliff Manor. The Gothic Revival church, built on Ogilby's summer estate,[58] was designed by Richard Upjohn and modeled on Saint Andrew's in Bemerton, England.[5](p21)[67] The church, with an 1883 Stick style rectory and 1904 Arts and Crafts-style parish hall, is an example of the modest English Gothic parish church popular in the region during the mid-19th century.[67]
The parish of St. Theresa's Catholic Church was established in 1926 with thirty-six families, and the present church was dedicated on September 23, 1928.[68] The rectory of the church was the farmhouse of James Stillman's Briarcliff Farm.[20] The church opened a school in 1965,[5](p157) which closed in 2013.[69]
Faith Lutheran Brethren Church had its 1959 beginning in a white chapel in Scarsdale. Its congregation then sold the chapel and moved to its 2-acre (0.81 ha) current site in Briarcliff Manor. The church, built largely through volunteer labor by the congregation's twelve families, held its first service on October 8, 1967. A nursery-school program, the Little School, began in 1972 and the church also sponsors women's and youth groups.[3](p75)
Briarcliff Congregational Church, built in 1896, has windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany, William Willet, J&R Lamb Studios, Hardman & Co. and Woodhaven.[14] The church began in a small, one-room schoolhouse (known as the "white school"), built around 1865 and used as a school, a religious school, and a house of worship for up to 60 people. In 1896, George A. Todd Jr. asked Walter Law to support the construction of a new church. Law donated the church land, making his new church a Congregational one so the entire community (regardless of religious background) could attend. The nave and a Norman-style tower were built first, in an English-parish style with Gothic windows. When the congregation outgrew the church, Law funded a northern section (including transepts and apse) which was dedicated in 1905. He donated the church organ (replacing it in 1924), four Tiffany windows and the manse across the street.[17] The church housed a weekly indoor farmers' market at its parish house from 2008 to 2011, when the market was moved to Pace University's Briarcliff Campus.[70]
Congregation Sons of Israel, self-described as egalitarian Conservative, is the only synagogue in Briarcliff Manor.[71] The congregation was formed in 1891 by eleven men in Ossining, and until 1902 services were held in homes and stores. That year, the congregation (now twenty-three families) purchased a building on Durston Avenue; the Jewish Cemetery, established in 1900 on Dale Avenue, is still in use. In 1920, the synagogue, numbering forty-five families, established a religious school. After outgrowing its facilities, it purchased a site on Waller Avenue and completed a new synagogue in 1922. During the 1950s the congregation purchased the eleven-acre Mead Farm on Pleasantville Road, which it has used since 1960.[3](p101)
Briarcliff Manor is home to seven Christian churches and two synagogues; three churches
