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Located on Madison Street just a hundred yards up from Main Street, it's candlelit, tucked away and with it's classic Italian dishes, about as romantic a spot as you can find anywhere. </p><p class="content"> A peculiarity about the place is its entrance. Although it has lots of frontage on the street, the entrance is actually a few feet up an alley on the side of the building, so where you go in is ninety degrees from the street. It's a very strange thing. </p><p class="content"> The reason for this is because the restaurant has had to deal with a local village ordinance that says you cannot serve wine or liquor -- what is an Italian restaurant without wine? -- within 60 feet of a church. So if the entrance had been facing the street, after the authorities stopped by to pull their liquor license all those years ago, the owners took a deep breath, crossed their fingers and measured off 65 feet from the end of the United Methodist Church five buildings up to the farthest side wall of the building. There it was legal. And so they built their entry door there. </p><p class="content"> The ordinance about the 60 feet still stands and if most people, possibly even the new owners, know about it, it is not likely that this odd entry door will change anytime soon. It's part of the romance of Il Cappuccino that you enter in that strange location at the start of the alley. </p><p class="content"> On the other hand, last week, it was announced that the beautiful United Methodist Church just six doors down is to be sold to a private individual to be turned into a private home. The whole town is up in arms about this. As a private home, there is nothing to stop the removal of the tall windows with the stained glass for smaller more private, home-like windows, the tearing out of the grand, double-door entryway to welcome parishioners or even the removal of the slender steeple and bell from the top. A private home is a private home. That would be the end of it. </p><p class="content"> The reason for the sale of the church is simple. Prices for real estate -- especially real estate within walking distance of everything downtown -- have gone through the roof. The church is in need of repair. And at the present time, there are only 44 parishioners, far too few to afford to make them. With the cash from this sale, the congregation could buy another building and turn it into a church. </p><p class="content"> As for the church building itself, because of some oversight, it is not on the State Historic Register. There is nothing to stop the tearing down of any part of the building, nothing to even stop the full bulldozing of it. </p><p class="content"> Forgetting for a minute that if the church were gone, the entryway of Il Cappuccino could be brought around front, it is interesting to note just how vulnerable this community is to the loss of its churches. Sag Harbor has lost at least three of them in the last forty years to private ownership. It is hard to imagine them losing more. </p><p class="content"> The old New England villages of the Hamptons and the North Fork are filled with churches. Most villages have at least five, a few have as many as ten. Whether you are religious or not, it is hard to deny that the existence of this forest of churches in these communities sends a message to residents and visitors alike that this is a place of peace, good moral values and worship. </p><p class="content"> There are many other towns that do not have treasures such as these. And subtle though it may be, there is a change in the tone of a place when churches and other houses of worship are not in evidence. </p><p class="content"> Of course life goes on, times change and the number of members in any particular congregation waxes and wanes. Churches get abandoned. Churches go into decline and accept activities from outside their particular faith. Sometimes churches even allow worship from other faiths that do not have their own places to pray. And some become meeting halls for a wide variety of activities. </p><p class="content"> In some instances, churches have been sold into private ownership out here, but then at a later date been returned to the religious group that built it. And in other instances, churches converted to private homes have been resold to other faiths to become houses of worship once more. </p><p class="content"> Given how expensive real estate is today, I think it would be wise for local governments to identify the houses of worship in their towns and pass laws that say regardless of who comes to own it, the architectural integrity of the place should remain. Once a church, always a church. Use it for other purposes indeed. But always be able to say, this was once a church and someday it could be a church again. </p><p class="content"> This is our heritage. 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