The project
The church at Zeitoun, rebuilt to the inch in New Jersey.
A replica, to every detail, of St. Mary's Church of Zeitoun — the same domes, the same proportions, the same silhouette against the sky — standing on US Route 206 in Hillsborough, with the Cultural Center beside it holding the museum. A cultural institution, open to all, of every faith and none.
The building
The replica will reproduce the original church to every detail: the central dome and its four companions, the crosses, the façade, and inside it the walls, columns, icons, banisters, arches and flooring. To make that possible, the foundation commissioned an architectural firm in Egypt to produce as-built drawings of the church in Zeitoun, and a professional photographer to record its full interior and exterior. Those drawings and photographs are now with an architectural firm in the United States, which is redrawing the plans to American standards and New Jersey codes.
It will be a church in form. Its purpose is cultural and historical: to give the apparition a place in North America, where a large part of the Coptic diaspora now lives; to hold the heritage of the people who witnessed it; and to let a visitor stand beneath the same domes and understand what happened there, and who these people are.
The museum
Inside, the museum will hold the artifacts and writings of the apparition: the photographs and film; the press coverage from 1968 onward; the Patriarchate's investigation and statement; the letters of blessing; and the testimony of witnesses, recorded while they can still be recorded. Every artifact will be kept by proper museum preservation techniques, so that it lasts for generations.
The museum will also hold the heritage of the Coptic people of Egypt: the two-thousand-year history of the Church of Alexandria and its influence across the Christian world; an exhibit on the immigration to the United States of the descendants of the pharaohs — the civilization they brought and the community they built; and the Copts who have distinguished themselves in America and the world. The heritage →
The Cultural Center Building.
Beside the church, a separate building: the Cultural Center, which will hold the museum.
The first gallery holds the apparition itself — the photographs and film, the press coverage from 1968 onward, the Patriarchate's investigation and its statement of 4 May 1968.
The rest is a great deal larger. The Cultural Center will hold nine galleries covering five thousand years: the night of 2 April 1968 and the three years that followed; the writing, the calendar and the medicine that Egypt gave the ancient world; Alexandria; the Church of Alexandria; the desert where Christian monasticism was invented; the Coptic language; Egypt under Islam; the migration to the United States that began in the 1950s; and a gallery of the Egyptians — Christian and Muslim — whose work the whole world uses.
It will also hold the things a museum needs and a church does not: a climate-controlled store for objects and paper, a reading room, a teaching space, and a hall for lectures, concerts and community events.
The building is planned at $4 million of the $10 million campaign. The Cultural Center, and its nine galleries →
The site
Route 206, Hillsborough, beside a living parish.
On 24 January 2019 the foundation purchased a property on US Highway 206 in Hillsborough Township, New Jersey, next door to St. Mary & St. Athanasius Coptic Orthodox Church. The memorial will stand beside a parish that already gathers, worships and serves — so it will never be an empty monument, and the parish gains a place to bring its children and its guests.
Hillsborough is forty minutes from Newark, an hour from Manhattan, and within a day's drive of the largest Coptic communities in North America. The site is visible from a state highway and reachable by car from anywhere in the region.
- Location
- Route 206, Hillsborough Township, Somerset County, NJ block & lot
- Purchased
- 24 January 2019, outright
- Neighbour
- St. Mary & St. Athanasius Coptic Orthodox Church
- Status
- Plans being redrawn to New Jersey codes. Site plan and township approvals follow.
Cost
$10 million, in four lines.
Two buildings, the approvals that have to come before either, and the money to open the doors. The internal split is for the foundation to confirm with its architect.
| Part | What it is | Projected |
|---|---|---|
| The memorial church | Construction of the replica church, with the specific materials and craftsmanship the original demands. | $5,000,000 |
| The Cultural Center Building | The building beside it that holds the museum: nine galleries, the store, the reading room, the teaching space and the hall. | $4,000,000 |
| Site work, engineering and township approvals | Everything that has to happen before either building can begin. This is the near-term ask. | $600,000 |
| Opening, fit-out and first-year operations | Exhibit installation, and the first year of running two buildings rather than none. | $400,000 |
| The endowment | A fund for operating expenses, maintenance and repairs, so the memorial never depends on the next appeal to keep its doors open. | Ongoing |
| Total | $10,000,000 |
The campaign goal rose from $7.5 million to $10 million when the Cultural Center was separated from the church as a building in its own right. The change was made because the collection warrants it: a memorial that only remembers one night is a smaller thing than a memorial that also keeps the record of the people who were there. The foundation should put this reasoning in its own words before it ships — a donor who gave at $7.5 million will read this paragraph carefully.
In what order
- DoneLand, drawings, photographs
The property is owned. The original church is measured and recorded.
- NowPlans to American standards and New Jersey codes
Under way with an architectural firm in the United States.
- NextSite plan and township approvals
$600,000, and nothing after it can begin without it. Engineering, permits, professional fees. This is the whole of the near-term ask.
- ThenThe church
$5 million, and the longest single stretch of the work. Foundations, structure, the five domes, the interior.
- ThenThe Cultural Center
$4 million, built while the collection is being assembled and the galleries designed. The two are not sequential by necessity — a lead gift for the Cultural Center would let both rise together, and the foundation would prefer that.
- ThenOpening the doors
$400,000: fit-out, installation, and the first year of running two buildings rather than none.