Celebrities Stage Reading in Effort to Save West Park Presbyterian
High-wattage actors such as Matt Damon and Alec Baldwin staged an Oct. 27 benefit play reading to raise funds for repairing the 135-year-old West Park Presbyterian. The church’s congregation wants to demolish it, citing financial hardship.
| 29 Oct 2025 | 10:19
Matt Damon (left) and Kenneth Lonergan have a chuckle during a discussion about Lonergan’s play. (
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Celebrities such as Alec Baldwin (far right) and Matt Damon (fourth from right) came together to stage a benefit reading of a Kenneth Lonergan play on Oct. 17, with the hope of halting any possible demolition of West Park Presbyterian. (Lonergan is fifth from left.) (
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A few mega-celebrities participated in a staged benefit reading of the Kenneth Lonergan play Hold On to Me Darling at The Sanctuary at St. Paul & St. Andrew on Monday, Oct. 27, in order to rally against the possible demolition of the landmarked West Park Presbyterian Church.
Minimum fundraiser tickets for the event went for $300 a head, but local residents could purchase “pay-what-you-can” tickets for $5 and up to pop in. The reading was put on by the Center at West Park, a cultural organization that was evicted from the church in July after a court battle.
West Park’s own congregation is seeking the demolition, in order to finalize a $33-million sale of the West 86th Street lot to a luxury developer; worshippers say that their finances have been battered by overwhelming repair costs. The church will reportedly be granted a space for services in any new mixed-used residential development built there.
To that end, they’ve asked the Landmarks Preservation Commission to accept a financial “hardship application,” which would essentially circumvent landmark protections.
In fact, the eviction of their cornerstone tenant—the Center at West Park—gave them the capacity to do so, as it certainly wouldn’t have been granted as long as tenants were operating on the premises. The congregation withdrew an earlier application in January, while the eviction case was still being litigated.
Yet some local residents and preservationists, not to mention an array of celebrities and politicians, have been consistently furious at the prospect of the 135-year-old Romanesque Revival church being knocked down. They’ve been using venues such as the Center at West Park to get their message out for years now, with the Oct. 27 reading being only the latest example.
Proceeds from the fundraiser will undoubtedly be offered as a means of repairing the church, with the hope of enticing the congregation to reconsider its hardship application. However, the Center at West Park had reportedly already offered the congregation roughly $7 million worth of grassroots donations by July, which were rejected. Instead, the congregation filed its hardship application by August.
In addition to playwright Kenneth Lonergan himself moderating the post-reading discussion, the cast was a mix of the star-studded and the locally beloved; Alec Baldwin, Matt Damon, J. Smith-Cameron, Charles Everett, Peter Friedman, Lucas Hedges, and Gretchen Mol participated.
The 2016 play follows Strings McCrane, a famed country musician who wrestles with questions of grief and identity after his mother passes away, leading him to move home. The original Off-Broadway production of the show starred Timothy Olyphant, with Adam Driver helming a 2024 revival, also on Off-Broadway.
Lonergan is also known for writing the plays This is Our Youth and The Waverly Gallery, as well as for writing and directing the Oscar-winning film Manchester by the Sea. He helped put together a staged reading of This Is Our Youth at the Center for West Park back in 2023, which also starred Matt Damon.
The Center at West Park isn’t done with its celebrity benefit run for this year, either, and is hosting a similar benefit reading of All About Eve that will feature Scarlett Johansson and J. Smith-Cameron on Nov. 17.