Heavenly Rest Episcopal Church, at 90th Street and Fifth Avenue, appears in Andy Warhol’s diary as a place where his social circle helped feed people in need. Visits on Christmas Day 1985 and Easter Sunday 1986 turn the church’s meal service into a point of contact—and visible distance—between the volunteers’ privileged world and the people they came to serve.

Setting and Christmas Visit

Warhol identified the church as Episcopalian. On Christmas Day 1985, he went there to meet Paige at its soup kitchen. Tama Janowitz had already left, apparently finding the experience too difficult. Paige was upset by the quality of the food; Warhol responded that it seemed poor only by comparison with the unusually good food they were accustomed to, judging it no worse than a high-school cafeteria meal.

The scene sharpened into a contrast of everyday circumstances. Warhol noticed people with bad teeth and reflected on how accustomed his circle was to seeing beautiful, polished people. He and Paige encountered not just a meal service but a different social world. He also noted that the church kept about twenty people overnight and fed them, though he did not know whether the same people stayed each night or how they were chosen. Before leaving, he passed out copies of Interview.

Easter Meal Service

On Easter Sunday, March 30, 1986, Warhol returned to help serve the church’s meal for poor people. Paige and Wilfredo joined him, and Paige said Stephen Sprouse was on his way by subway. The volunteers proved necessary: Warhol wrote that there would not have been enough helpers without them. The work was strenuous, and the meal service drew people who gathered food and supplies to take away.

Warhol described recipients stocking up on oranges, apples, and Easter eggs in shopping bags; some also collected cups and plastic knives and forks. Wilfredo worked hard, handing out ham, and the kitchen used six large restaurant urns of coffee. The volunteers prayed together. One woman brought in a potted plant and traded it for one of the better plants available, a small exchange Warhol singled out amid the practical bustle of the meal.

Service, Distance, and the Diary’s View

The Easter entry records service alongside Warhol’s difficulty meeting the diners face to face: he wrote that he never made eye contact, looking sideways and up and down instead. His attention to specific gestures—the collected utensils, a woman’s teeth kept in a napkin, and her alarm when someone clearing the table nearly removed them—makes the encounter concrete, while also preserving the limits of his engagement. He observed that many of the women looked like his mother and described one man as wrapped up like a figure from Arabian Nights.

The diary’s tone shifts between discomfort, observation, and enjoyment. Warhol called the day hard work but also said he had fun; outside, it was sunny and bright, and the volunteers ran out. Set beside the Christmas visit, the Easter service shows the church as a recurring place where charitable work interrupted the routines of Warhol’s circle without erasing the social distance he recognized there.