A Staten Island church is getting ready to celebrate its 150th anniversary next year. NY1’s Amanda Farinacci explains what makes it so special in the following report.

Trinity Lutheran Church on St. Paul's Avenue in Stapleton once served a large German population on Staten Island's north shore. In fact, it was known as "German Lutheran Church," and legend has it was built on beer money.

“There were large breweries here in the Stapleton area, and the owners of those breweries and their families were members of this congregation,” says Pastor Richard Michael. “They were German immigrants who opened what was basically a major industry here on Staten Island.”

Services were conducted just up the hill on Cebra Avenue until 1913. But that year the old church was pulled down and the present church built up.

Its pastor at the time, Frederic Sutter, graduated from Wagner College in Rochester, and is responsible for moving the school to the island.

“In those days, our Lady's Aide Society was responsible for collecting food to feed the students up on Grymes Hill or firewood to heat the dorms,” says Pastor Michael. “It was a very tight-knit relationship.”

The church has since stopped collecting food for the college, but it is still collecting food for the neighborhood. Congregants have been running a food bank for two ours on Saturdays since 1987.

“The number has been growing. We were especially affected by 9/11, since our proximity to the South Ferry,” says food bank director Michael Perrine. “We receive anywhere from 5-10 new participants a week.”

Stained glass windows adorn the church walls. Produced in Germany around World War I, they were hidden until the war was over so they wouldn't be ruined, and then delivered and installed. The historic windows are now being restored, which will take about 10 years.

“They're extremely dirty from over the years of soot and such, from inside and out,” says Robert Lennox of Stained Glass Imagery. “We take a ton of grime off the windows, and we make them about 15 percent brighter.”

Brighter windows are just part of a year-long celebration at the church, which Trinity Lutheran plans to mark each weekend of the year by looking back at the church's past, and moving ahead in its future.

- Amanda Farinacci