Caroline Church and Cemetery

Caroline Church and its cemetery occupy a six-acre parcel beside the village green in Setauket, on Long Island's north shore. The church was built about 1729 by John Sears for an Anglican congregation that had been left without a place of worship. It is a three by four-bay building of heavy hewn timber framing, sheathed in wide wood shingles, with a central tower and narthex. A gallery was added in 1744, and a parish hall followed in 1905. In 1937 the parish hall was moved and joined to the church by an open passage, and the interior was restored in a Colonial Revival manner. The cemetery, established in 1734, holds nearly 900 markers showing changing funerary motifs from winged effigies to Gothic Revival designs. The property was recognized as a rare surviving example of settlement-era building tradition and as the oldest Episcopal church building on Long Island. Its significance period runs from 1729 to 1940.