The Ethical Culture movement sprang from the mind of 25-year
old Felix Adler in 1876. It was a brash,
unexpected and brave undertaking for the son of the rabbi of New York City’s
most prestigious synagogue, Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue. The Social Reform movement in America had
already gained momentum; but the German-born Adler’s vision went further. His Ethical Culture’s focus on enhancing ethical
standards would logically include human rights, racial and sexual equality,
humanitarianism, housing, political principles, and religion.
Adler’s Society for Ethical Culture was incorporated on
February 21, 1877. The society plunged
headlong into the problems of those in need; creating a visiting nurse service
and organizing the first free kindergarten in the United States. Quickly other programs followed—the Workingmen’s
School in 1880 (which became the The Ethical Culture School in 1895), the
Mothers’ Society to Study Child Nature and in 1889 the Visiting and Teaching Guild
for Cripple Children. Similar programs
were added, contributing to the Society’s esteem within the community.
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| Some of Felix Adler's theological views were shocking to Edwardian traditionalists - from the collection of the Library of Congress |
But there was one aspect of the Society which made staid
citizens uneasy. The religious services
of the Society were “non-theistic.” The
members did not recognize the traditional religions and its marriage ceremonies
treated the bride and groom as equals.
The word “obey” was not included in the short ceremony. Dr. John Lovejoy Elliott would later explain “Morality
is supreme, we believe, and I think that everybody who is decent is an ethical
culturist.”
As might be expected, as the Society grew differences of
opinion on its management arose. On
March 3, 1909 the New-York Tribune noted “Born out of a rebellion against the
orthodox religious forms, the society now finds itself in the curious position
of being divided into ‘high church’ and ‘low church’ parties.”
The day before member Percival Chubb addressed the woman’s
conference of the Society. He expressed
his concern that the Society was “cold” and “too colorless to hold young women.” He suggested that all it would take to make young
female members abandon the Society was to “get their heads inside an Episcopal
church, or any other that has a little ‘color’ in its worship, and ‘off they
go.’”
Already plans had been laid for a new, permanent
headquarters for the Society for Ethical Culture on Central Park West and the
corner of 63rd Street. Chubb
offered his views of what it should include.
“We are going to have stained glass windows and frescoes and an
organ. Why should we not have more and
give these young people what they want?
They want a beautiful celebration of marriage, a beautiful rite of
admission, a beautiful ceremony for the naming of children.”
Another member, Robert D. Kohn, was not quite as
enthusiastic as Chubb. The respected
architect had recently completed the New York Evening Post Building and the
Spero Building, both striking examples of Art Nouveau architecture. Now, on June 23, 1909, he filed plans for a
$300,000 “four-story and basement meeting house and Sunday school” for the
Society for Ethical Culture.
If Percival Chubb wanted the “color” of the Episcopal
Church, he was sorely disappointed.
Instead, Kohn produced a dignified and somber edifice, the style of
which the Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide said could not “be ‘tagged,”
in the sense of having borrowed its elegance of manner from some accepted style
of architecture.”
Dedicated with “appropriate ceremonies” in October 1910, the
building was widely praised. The Guide,
on October 29, said Kohn “has received wide commendation for the graceful
originality and the artistic honesty of his conception.” A letter to the editor of the Evening Post
said “at a time when buildings are springing up on every hand the most
successful of which claim our favor by some derived nobility of style, it is
worth while to note the birth of a building conceived in a totally different
spirit.” The writer summed up his
critique saying “Conviction is in every big line of this composition; an air of
necessity, of massive simplicity pervades the whole.”
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| The blocky brackets between the openings under the cornice were intended to hold sculptures. |
"Massive simplicity” perfectly defined Kohn’s building. The Record and Guide noted, “The exterior walls are built of massive blocks of limestone, hand cut with tooth chisels.” High above street level Kohn included tall niches on heavy brackets, nearly identical to those in his New York Post Building, intended to house statues. There was no grand portico, no classical columns; simply a sturdy block defined by geometry and openings.
Typical of the Society’s focus on equality, the few
sculptural details were done by women. Above
the entrance was a bas relief executed by the architect’s wife, Estelle Rumbold
Kohn, of figures in “an attitude of reverent light.” Four smaller figures of torch bearers
decorated the side entrances.
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| Estele Rumbold Kohn executed the entrance sculpture--its style in perfect harmony with the architecture. |
The New York Times was moved. “The severe plain wall is eloquent in its
protest against the breathless rush and hustle of the modern city; it beckons
to the hastening, sordid throng: ‘Tarry a while; there is in life more than
stocks and shekels and vain show.’”
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| Small sculptures of torch bearers decorate the side entrances, which are flanked by striking lamps. |
Far afield from Episcopalian abundance, the auditorium was
relatively severe. Stained glass windows
on the north wall provided color and ornament; otherwise the vaulted ceiling,
the oaken pews arranged in a fan-shape on the inclined floor, and the simple
stage, while relatively understated, created an inspiring space. The Times explained “The new Meeting House is
designed for service and for comfort; it is not a Vanity Fair, neither is it a
prison of the spirit.”
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| photo - http://kazenowa911.blog6.fc2.com/blog-entry-10.html |
Felix Adler’s views on education and religion would continue
to raise eyebrows among traditionalists.
Not long before the completion of the 64th Street building,
he explained to a Times reporter, “Moral training is necessary for everyone;
religious training is another matter.
Not every one is born with a religious nature; there can be unreligious
persons just as there are unmusical persons.”
He continued, “Very great harm is done by trying to force
religion on people who are not by nature religious…Much of the tragedy of
history has arisen from no other cause than insistence in forcing religion on
persons irreligious by temperament and their consequent misconception of it.”
Three weeks after the building’s dedication, Adler’s views shocked
some--perhaps even some of the Society.
While speaking in the auditorium on “Christianity and Socialism” on November
20, he criticized Socialism for insisting that all men were equal. Although he explained, “I do not object to
equal shares. I would not mind wearing
the same sort of clothes as a workingman, eating the same sort of food, living
in the same kind of a house. That is not
the reason why I object to expressing brotherhood as equality of satisfaction
of desires.”
He gave an example. “I
do not think of the drunken man in the gutter as like me. He is like and yet he is very unlike. I don’t like too close contact—I would prefer
a certain distance between myself and my fellowman, like that which separates
the planets, each revolving about the sun and governed by it, yet each in its
own orbit.”
The Society’s interest in all religions and adherence to
none was exemplified by the series of services headed by associate leader
Alfred W. Martin beginning on January 8, 1911.
His topics included, “Introducing the Discovery of the Sacred of Sacred
Books of the East and Its Ethical Effects,” “Gotama, the Buddha, and the Path
to Salvation,” “Zoraster, the Prophet of Industry” and “Confucius, Lao-Tze and
the Problem of Good Government.”
It was the marriage ceremonies that most often drew press
attention. On October 21, 1912 Hilda
Matzner married Louis O. Schwartz. The
headline in The Sun ignored the names of the couple; rather it focused on the
non-traditional ceremony. “No Ring and
No ‘Obey’ Will Bind These Two—No Mention of Love in Their Ethical Culture
Society Marriage.”
When pressed by a reporter to explain why the Society
dropped the phrase “to love and obey” from the ceremony, Dr. John Lovejoy
Elliott replied, “As far as marriage goes, we believe in common with all other
good thinkers, that man dedicates himself to the idea that the woman’s welfare
should be placed by him before his own; and the woman dedicates herself to the
idea that the man’s welfare should be placed before her own. There is nothing mysterious about the
ceremony and nothing startling.”
Apparently the explanation was not sufficient for The Sun. When Maude R. Ingersoll was married to
Wallace McLean Probasco two months later, on December 30, 1912, The Sun’s
report included a sub-headline that read, “Ethical Culture Ceremony Exacts No
Promise to Obey Husband.” Not
overlooking the fact that Maude’s deceased father was “the agnostic,” the
newspaper added “Miss Ingersoll has long been a member of the cult.”
The Society’s concerns for social welfare included Felix
Adler’s seat on the first Executive Committee of the National Urban League in
1910. He was, incidentally, also Professor
of Political and Society Ethics at Columbia since 1902. (Adler’s professorship at Cornell University
had earlier been removed because of his “dangerous views.”)
Emblematic of the wide-range of events in the building was A
Better Industrial Relations Exhibit held from April 18 to 25, 1914. Iron
Age described it saying “It will show the devices in modern business which
tend to make more harmonious the relations between employer and employee, and
to better the conditions of employment.”
And in 1915 the building hosted a meeting of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People, which the Society had been instrumental in
founding.
The auditorium was repeatedly the scene of lectures and
discussions; many of them controversial.
Harriet Stanton Blatch reprimanded American women on Monday afternoon,
March 25, 1918. She said the women of
the U.S. were lagging in war work and “must wake up.” The New-York Tribune reported she “dropped
this bomb into the meeting of the Society for Ethical Culture…when she declared
that American women were not doing nearly enough to help the war, and that the
time would come when they would be called upon to bend their backs to men’s
labors, even as the women of Europe have done.”
She pointed out that 60,000 German women were making
military uniforms and that French women and girls were working the farms. Blatch reprimanded, “We are too extravagant…We
are too fond of ‘the way mother used to do’ Imagine fifty women standing over
fifty stoves, boiling fifty little pots of potatoes! Women, wake up. That sort of thing won’t do. We must adopt the time and labor saving
devices that science has put in our hands.
Mother’s way won’t do for the terribly poor world we have got to
reconstruct after the war.”
The auditorium was the scene of marriages and funerals over
the decades; but perhaps none was so noteworthy as that of Felix Adler himself, who
died at the age of 81 in April 1933. The
funeral was held on April 27.
Felix Adler’s death came at a time of great political
upheaval in Europe. A year later, on
Saturday December 8, 1934 that climate was reflected in the topic of Dr. Hans
Kohn, “Communism, Fascism and Europe.”
As Central Park West and 64th Street changed
around it, the Society for Ethical Culture’s building did not. In 2004 a significant renovation of the
auditorium was completed by architect Marc Holmquist and interior design firm
Drake Design Associates. The exterior,
as well as the Society’s goals, remain steadfastly unchanged. Its website declares, “We embrace the
diversity of our city and invite all to join us in celebrating life’s joys,
supporting one another through life’s crises, and working together to make the
world a better place.”
photographs by the author
photographs by the author
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