The Lost St. Ambrose Church - Prince and Thompson Streets

 

image from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

On Monday, January 25, 1838, Charles B. Moore, the Master in Chancery, sold the property at the southwest corner of Thompson and Prince Streets at auction.  The nearly square plot measured 70 feet along Prince Street and 67 feet on Thompson.  Sitting upon it was a stoic granite building, erected before the Revolutionary War for military purposes and since converted to a Scotch Presbyterian church.  According to Herbert B. Steele, in an interview with the New-York Tribune in March 1903,

The site was originally that of a fort, you know, during British occupation, and afterward used by our own soldiers as a garrison.  You can see where the cellar walls are stoutly buttressed.  Thousands of pounds of gunpowder have been stored there at one time...After the war closed?  Oh, yes, it was then used for government stores and by the city till the Presbyterians got hold of it, in 1815, and made a church of it.

Four months after the auction, on March 29, 1838, an announcement in The Evening Post said that the "Eighth Ward Protestant Episcopal Church, corner of Prince and Thompson sts." would be renting pews three days that week from 3 to 6 p.m.  Before a year had passed, the church's name had been changed to the Church of the Annunciation.  It would be just the first of several name changes to come.

Its military origins made the gray granite building about as somber as an ecclesiastical structure could be.  The addition of a shallow gable roof had given it a vaguely Greek Revival appearance, as did the unusual earred stone lintels over the Thompson Street openings.

A common method for congregations to raise funds to pay off their mortgages was a fair.  A notice in The Evening Post on December 28, 1839 announced, "The Ladies' Sewing Society attached to the Church of the Annunciation, (Rev. Dr. Seabury, Rector,) intend holding a fair for the sale of a variety of useful and fancy articles, at the Lyceum building, in Broadway, second door south of Prince st."

The Church of the Annunciation remained here until 1847 when it moved north to 14th Street.  The Thompson Street building became home to Emmanuel Church.  On December 10, 1848, its new rector, Rev. Alexander S. Leonard, took the pulpit.  The congregation's stay would be short.  Six years later, on July 9, 1853, The New York Times reported,

The Vestry of the Anglo-American Free Church of St. George the Martyr, have rented the building on the corner of Prince and Thompson-streets, heretofore occupied by the congregation of Emmanuel Church...The location is intended to be but temporary.

The Church of St. George the Martyr was organized in 1845.  The New York Times said its primary purpose was, "to provide a church to which persons coming from Great Britain could resort; secondly to afford help by way of counsel to those who stand in need of it, and thus to save them from many pitfalls; and, thirdly, to administer to their material wants, and especially to give aid to the sick."

As intended, the congregation's time here was "but temporary."  It moved far north to 44th Street between Fifth And Sixth Avenues and the Thompson Street church became a "chapel of ease," or "overflow mission," for St. Thomas's Church, then at the corner of Broadway and Houston Streets.  On September 4, 1858, the New-York Tribune reported, "The Rev. Ralph Hoyt, whose name is pretty well known both as a poet and a clergyman, officiates regularly at the (free) chapel of St. Thomas Church at the corner of Prince and Thompson streets...We mention the fact of his present location for the benefit of persons who may desire to hear him.  The seats are free."

The dizzying series of name changes was not over.  The New York Times reported on November 29, 1866 that St. Ambrose Church, "lately constituting the Mission Chapel of St. Thomas' Church, meeting at the corner of Prince and Thompson-streets, has just been organized and incorporated."  

At the time, the district that would become known as Soho was still affluent, its streets lined with elegant Federal and Greek Revival mansions.  Herbert B. Steele would recall the affluent families who worshiped at St. Ambrose Church, saying, "a long row of coaches stood before its door after service, and many of the city's old families were represented among its vestrymen--Commodores Vanderbilt and Gerry, General [John G.] Barnard, R. Fulton Cutting and A. T. Stewart, whose home was then in Sullivan-st."

The congregation became known for its outreach.  On June 8, 1868, The New York Times remarked, "The Friendly Society of St. Ambrose Church (Episcopalian), although but little known to the general public--by reason of the quiet and unostentatious manner in which its work has been conducted--is one of the most deserving of Christian charities, having for its object the pecuniary relief of the aged poor of all Protestant denominations, without reference to sex, color or nationality, within the limits of that parish."

The need to provide financial help to citizens within the boundaries of the parish was a hint of the changes that were taking place.  By 1874, the influx of poor immigrants had changed the neighborhood from one of refined private homes to tenements.  The other churches abandoned the district as their congregants moved further uptown.  The Diocesan Record of Mississippi said on October 3 that year,

This is the only church we have in a ward overcrowded with thirty-five thousand souls.  Amid these thousands, chiefly of the very poverty stricken, the Rev. Mr. Sill, the rector of St. Ambrose, moves about giving counsel in hours of dire extremity, both for soul and body.  St. Ambrose was originally built for the Scotch Presbyterians; it afterwards became the chapel of a wealthy uptown congregation.

Worshipers in St. Ambrose Church could expect to hear stern Victorian instruction.  On March 15, 1874, for instance, Rev. Frederick Sill's topic was "Temperance and Industry."

The changing demographics necessitated the addition of a priest, the Rev. Stander, as "missionary to the Italians."  On November 13, 1875, in reporting on the confirmation of 85 new parishioners, The Evening Post said, "The services were conducted in the Italian language" and "the Italians made the responses and sang the psalms and hymns in their own tongue."

Rev. Frederick Sill's successor was the wealthy Rev. Joseph Bloomfield Wetherill.  His wife was the daughter of Judge J. Lawrence Smith and a niece of millionaire Alexander Turney Stewart (an original congregant of St. Ambrose).  Herbert B. Steele would recall, "He and his wife put their whole souls into the upbuilding of the church, and spent any amount of money on it."

Among their improvements was the addition of six "very fine paintings," as described by Steele, purchased in Italy.  He estimated their value at "fifty or sixty thousand dollars."  (That appraisal would translate to roughly $1.7 million in 2024.)

image via Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue by J. Robert Wright (original source unknown)

At around 5:30 on the evening of January 24, 1883, sexton Alexander Bradley went to the church to light the stoves in preparation for that night's services.  He took his young son with him.  He unlocked the door, but found it barred from the inside and could hear footsteps within the church.  Leaving his son on the stoop, he "ran around to Prince street and found one of the windows open," reported The Sun.  He climbed in.  There was no one inside and now the front door was open.  His son said a man had rushed out and run away.

The would-be burglars had cut the paintings from their frames, torn up the carpets and rolled the paintings inside.  In the small yard behind the church, a stovepipe was found, in which the largest of the paintings had been stashed.  Luckily, according to the article, none of the artwork was "much injured."  The sexton had arrived just in time.  The entire communion service had also been packed up for removal.  The Sun noted, "In the course of the search for valuables the robbers discovered a bottle of wine intended for the communion service on Sunday next.  They poured a portion of it into two small silver vessels belonging to the communion service, and drank the rest."

Herbert Steele later added, "The pictures were replaced and the matter hushed up," but iron grating was installed over the windows.

The Rev. Joseph Bloomfield Wetherill died on December 6, 1886.  His funeral was held in St. Ambrose Church on December 8.  Steele said, "After Dr. Wetherill's death his widow removed the paintings, as they were really personal property."

As more Germans poured into the neighborhood, still another priest was brought into St. Ambrose.  On November 24, 1900, The Church Standard reported that the Rev. Henry C. Dyer had been appointed "to take charge of the services in the Italian language," while noting, "the Rev. Geo. F. Langdon has charge of the services in English, and the Rev. Martin Albert ministers to the German congregation."

At the time of the article, the end of the line for the venerable church, which had been described by The Sun at the time of the attempted robbery in 1883 as "a plain, substantial-looking stone building," was on the near horizon.  On March 8, 1903, the New-York Tribune reported that the Church of St. Ambrose "is to be torn down in April to make room for a ten story tenement house."

The article noted, "Last Sunday, a slight noise in the vestibule attracted the sexton's attention, as he has been obliged to keep a sharp lookout for small boys of penny pitching proclivities, who make this spot their rendezvous.  Instead, he found two young men whom, in his provincialism, he took for reporters, until from the questions and conversation about the old church it transpired that they were a Vanderbilt and a Cutting, come to look for the first and last time at the church of their ancestors."

The replacement building survives.  image via apartments.com