In 1846, the idyllic plot of land in Seneca Village, far north of the established city, seemed the perfect spot for the new All Angels Episcopal church. It wasn’t.
The wooden structure was built for an ethnically and culturally diverse congregation–freed slaves, “cross-breed Indians” and multi-national immigrants worshiped side by side. The rector, Thomas McClure Peters called it a church, “in which white and black and all intermediate shades worshiped harmoniously together.”
Within seven years the city fathers would come knocking on Father Peters’ door. The land on which the church stood, as well as the rest of Seneca Village, sat squarely in the designated area of the newly-planned Central Park. The city condemned all the structures standing there.
The new church structure, built two years later in 1858, sat on the corner of West End Avenue and West 80th Street. When the Reverend Dr. Charles F. Hoffman took over as rector in 1873, he envisioned a grander, loftier building. The extremely wealthy clergyman was worth an estimated $15 million and he volunteered to personally pay for the new church.
All Angels' 1858 church as it appeared around 1887 -- photo allangels.com
And so, once again, the congregation of All Angels watched their church be demolished and a new one erected.
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| from the collection of the New York Public Library |
The stately building, which cost Hoffman around $100,000, was spectacular. A two-and-a-half story Tiffany window, mosaic altar, limestone angels girding the pulpit and a sanctuary lamp from Venice decorated the interior which could seat 1,200 worshipers.
Three years later, the newspaper announced that plans had been filed by architect Henry J. Hardenbergh. “It is to be 50 feet front and 77 feet deep, with a façade of brick with trimmings of limestone. It is to cost $90,000," said the article.
Hardenbergh, who had designed the Dakota Apartment building in 1880 and the gargantuan Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on Fifth Avenue at 34th Street in the 1890s, played with styles and periods in designing the parish house. Gothic tracery blends smoothly with tall Flemish dormers. Irregular limestone quoins rise at the corners to a two-story hipped slate roof. By framing the grouped windows of the second and third floors with a stone, Gothic arch, Hardenberg created the illusion of a two-story chapel window. The architect allowed himself to abandon balance in favor of character as he did in, possibly, no other structure.
The parish house was the center of activity for the congregation. Attesting to the church's forward-thinking, it was here in 1922–three years before the famous Scopes Trial and during a period when the religious and scientific did always agree–that Dr. Raymond L. Ditmars of the Bronx Zoo gave a lecture on 30,000,000 years of evolution, accompanied by a 4,000-foot series of films, including scenes of dinosaurs shot using close-ups of a South African lizard.
By 1976, the parish was in trouble. Changes in the neighborhood had reduced the congregation to 150 parishioners. The church, built to serve over one thousand, became a financial burden. The offices and the services were moved to the parish house and, once again, this time in 1979, a church edifice of All Angels was demolished. In place of the great Gothic Revival church, a 21-story apartment house was built.
From its distinguished Hardenbergh home, All Angels holds two services on Sundays and evening services on the weekends when the homeless are invited to participate. Meals are served afterwards. On Sundays, the church offers an evening shelter and a community meal.
“Pathways,” a weekly program, provides clothing, showers, and social, psychiatric and medical services for those in need.
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