Church Missions House

Church Missions House
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
New York State Register of Historic Places
New York City Landmark No. 1044
Location	281 Park Ave. South Manhattan, New York, US
Coordinates	40°44′21″N 73°59′12″W / 40.73917°N 73.98667°W / 40.73917; -73.98667
Built	1892
Architect	Robert Williams Gibson Edward J. Neville Stent
Architectural style	Late 19th and Early 20th Century Revivals Flemish style
NRHP reference No.	82003370
NYSRHP No.	06101.001680[1]
NYCL No.	1044
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	June 3, 1982[3]
Designated NYSRHP	April 9, 1982[1]
Designated NYCL	September 11, 1979[2]

Church Missions House (also known as 281 Park Avenue South) is a historic building at Park Avenue South and East 22nd Street in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Part of an area once known as "Charity Row", the building was designed by Robert W. Gibson and Edward J. Neville Stent, with a steel structure and medieval-inspired facade. The design was inspired by the town halls of Haarlem and medieval Amsterdam. Church Missions House is so named because it was the headquarters of the Episcopal Church's Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society for much of the 20th century.

The facade is made of granite at the ground story and Indiana Limestone on the other stories. The facade's composition is based on the arrangement of the superstructure, which is arranged as a grid of rectangles. The main entrance is through a porch at the center of the Park Avenue facade. Inside, the building contains at least 33,600 square feet (3,120 m²) of space. As of December 2019^[update], all six floors of the building are occupied by Fotografiska New York, an offshoot of the Swedish photography museum Fotografiska.

The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society sought to develop a dedicated headquarters for much of the 19th century. The Church Missions House building was built between 1892 and 1894. The building was sold in 1963 to the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies (FPWA). The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated Church Missions House as a landmark in 1979, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. The FPWA moved out of the building in 2015, and Fotografiska New York opened there in 2019.