The Growth Years

With the installation of the Reverend Charles Frederick Hoffman in May of 1860, an era of substantial growth for St. Philip’s Church commenced. The arrival of the Hudson River Railroad fifteen years earlier had brought many new families to Garrison, including some of the most prominent names in the country: the Upjohns, the Fish family, the Sloans, Osborns and Pierponts. In 1860, perceiving the needs of an expanding parish, Mr. Hoffman directed the vestry to undertake the design and construction of a new church building. Enthusiastic parishioners raised $10,000 to construct a new Victorian Gothic granite church which was designed by the prominent church architect, Richard Upjohn, a Garrison resident and vestry member at St. Philip’s. Upjohn had designed the new Trinity Church building in New York City a few years earlier. The new church was consecrated in 1862.

Hamilton Fish, then a United States Senator and later, the Governor of New York, was elected to the vestry and would continue to serve until his death in 1893. Mr. Hoffman’s pivotal ministry was followed by that of another strong leader, the Reverend Albert Zabriskie Gray. During Mr. Gray’s ministry, a second little chapel was constructed on donated land off of Route 9 to provide spiritual guidance for families scattered to the east of Garrison proper. A few years later, that property became the home of the Friars of the Atonement at Graymoor, in a complicated transaction that roiled many members of the St. Philip’s congregation and was finally resolved only by a decree from the state legislature in Albany. The conflict centered around an Episcopal Priest who started the Friars as an Episcopal monastic community and then took the congregation (and the property) into the Roman Catholic Church. To this day, many of the old time families at St. Philip’s believe that that land still belongs to us!