Baptist Temple Church under construction to save its roof from collapsing. (Photo by Tim Kiladze)

Baptist Temple Church on 116 Street in East Harlem is under dramatic construction after the Department of Buildings deemed the building unsafe because of a cracked front façade and worn-out trusses hanging off a bearing wall.

The church has been closed since Sept. 19 and no one is allowed inside for safety reasons, forcing the congregation to meet elsewhere. The construction left a gaping hole in the church’s exterior, covered only by a tarp.

After an inspection, the Department of Buildings “determined that the defective section of the roof and the front masonry needed to be removed to a safe level,” Carly Sullivan of the department’s press office wrote in an email. The construction forced the brief closure of 116 Street between Malcolm X Boulevard and Fifth Avenue as large cranes dismantled the highest part of the roof and removed a portion of the stone façade, and the city issued a vacate order.

The Department of Housing Preservation and Development completed the construction and will bill the church for the work, according to an email from Miriam Solis of the department’s press office. Her note explained the department is not responsible for the building’s repair.

The Department of Buildings filed a violation against the building’s owners for failing to repair the church before they stepped in. The Rev. Shepherd Lee, the pastor, declined to comment on the violation and would not explain how the church is responding. “I have to be cautious in this society that we live in,” he said.

Neighboring businesses, mostly small retail outlets, said they had not been drastically affected by the construction, other than the street’s initial closure.

Baptist Temple Church, a former synagogue, was built in 1906 by a growing Jewish community that moved to Harlem between 1870 and 1930. Aside from the Lower East Side and Warsaw, Harlem was once the world’s third largest Jewish settlement, The New York Times reported in a 2002 profile of Harlem churches.