The Washington Square United Methodist Church building at 134 West 4th Street has been acquired by Jon Kully and Mick Walsdorf who will retain its landmark exterior and create 8 condominium apartments inside.

Kully and Walsdorf are partners in FLAnk Architects and they recently got a $12 million construction and acquisition loan through CapitalSource Finance LLC of Bethesda, Maryland, for the project, which will have two garden apartments and two penthouse duplexes with terraces. According to George Kruse, an investment officer in the structure finance business division of CapitalSource, the apartments should go to sale at the beginning of next summer.

The church, which is located between the Avenue of the Americas and MacDougal Street, was the site of the world premiere last year of "Pentimento" by the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company.

In his excellent book, "From Abyssinian to Zion, A Guide To Manhattan's Houses of Worship" (Columbia University Press, 2004), David W. Dunlap, a reporter for The New York Times, provides the following information about this building:

"The congregation emerged by the Sullivan Street Methodist Episcopal Church, at 149 Sullivan Street?, a reorganized Episcopal group founded in 18942. Its sanctuary became the Church of St. Anthony of Padua. The present church was built in 1859-1860 to designs by Charles Hadden, and the congregation changed its name to reflect its new location. In 1893, the Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church, on the other side of Washington Square, merged with the Washington Square United Methodist Church.

This was a center for antiwar activism during the Vietnam war and has stayed true to that course.

The church is also a sanctuary for gay New Yorkers. The Harvey Milk School for lesbian and gay youth began at Washington Square in 1985, and the Rev. Paul M. Abels, pastor from 1973 to 1984, was the first openly gay minister with a congregation in a major Christian denomination."