Salam Church demolished
Another Bay Ridge church is history. The Salam Arabic Lutheran Church on Ovington Avenue near Third Avenue was demolished earlier this month, a little more than a year after being purchased by a developer.
The sanctuary, which opened in 1942 and is modeled on the cathedral in Copenhagen, was purchased from the Lutheran Synod by Xi Wu, who plans to construct a five-story, 25-unit apartment building on the site.
The church is the second religious building on the block to be taken down; the Bay Ridge United Methodist Church, which stood at the corner of Fourth Avenue for over 100 years, was demolished in 2008 to make way for development. When the bottom fell out of the residential construction market, the site minus the church building was sold to the citys Department of Education which is presently constructing a school there.