The Lost Grace Gospel Chapel - 102 West 133rd Street

photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Born in Maryland in 1868, Reverend Frederick Cullen founded the Salem Methodist Episcopal Chapel as a mission of St. Mark's United Methodist Church in the East Village.  In 1908, Salem Chapel became an independent congregation: the Salem Methodist Episcopal Church.  That year the New York City Church Extension and Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church paid $93,000 for the vintage houses at 102 and 104 West 133rd Street.  Formerly the homes of Frederick Stimson and John Henry Bradford, they were converted into a worship space for Salem Methodist Episcopal Church.

The church became a center not only for worship, but for civil rights and cultural events.  Cullen would become president of the Harlem branch of the NAACP, and in 1917 was vice-president of the Negro Silent Protest Parade, commonly known as the Silent Parade.  On July 28 that year, 10,000 Blacks marched along Fifth Avenue to protest racist violence like the lynchings in Waco, Texas and Memphis, Tennessee.

Two significant memorial services were held here in 1919.  The first honored President Theodore Roosevelt.  On January 27, The New York Times reported, "One thousand negro residents of Harlem attended a memorial meeting in honor of Colonel Roosevelt last night in the Salem African Methodist Episcopal Church, 102 West 133d Street."  

And five months later, on June 9, the New-York Tribune reported on the memorial service of Madam C. J. Walker.  Born Sarah Breedlove in 1867 in Louisiana where her parents and older siblings had been slaves, Walker developed beauty and hair products for Black women.  Described by the Guinness Book of Records as being "America's first, self-made female millionaire," she created an empire.  The article noted  that during the service messages were read from Governor Alfred E. Smith; R. R. Morton, principal of Tuskegee Institute; and from Emmett J. Scott, special assistant to the Secretary of War.

In 1924, the Salem Methodist Episcopal Church moved into the former Calvary Methodist Church building at 129th Street and Seventh Avenue (today's Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard).  The altered houses at 102-104 West 133rd Street were purchased by Grace Gospel Chapel.  The congregation hired architect Vertner Woodson Tandy to renovate the building.  The first Black architect registered in New York State, Tandy was born in 1885 and educated Tuskegee Institute and Cornell University.  Interestingly, among his prominent designs was the $250,000 mansion of Madam C. J. Walker in Irvington-on-Hudson.

The renovations were completed in 1925.  Tandy had transformed the old brownstones into a Spanish Mission-style fantasy.  With the stoops removed, the entrances (one to the worship space and the other to apartments on the top two floors) were located below grade, at the former English basement level.  Tandy covered the stone with white stucco and accentuated the Spanish motif with red brick and colorful tiles.  A group of three windows at the second floor were fronted with a picturesque iron balcony.  

The combined buildings originally looked much like the extant houses to the right.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Shallow, decorative buttresses gave the facade dimension.  A charming octagonal bell tower at the corner rose above the orange-tiled roof.

The upper two floors held apartments, including one for the pastor, Reverend Talbot Berton Nottage, and his wife, Josephine Barnett.  Born in 1885 in the Bahamas, Talbot Berton Nottage became minister of Grace Gospel Chapel in 1921.  He was, as well, the editor of Testimony, a monthly missionary periodical, and president of the Harlem Bible Association.

The apartments in the building provided additional funds for the church.  An advertisement in The New York Age on December 18, 1926 read: "Spacious furnished rooms to let at 102 West 133rd street, Grace Gospel Chapel.  References desired."

The sanctuary, which was in the basement level, was regularly the scene of weddings and funerals.  One funeral, however, would be especially poignant.  

The auditorium accommodated hundreds of worshipers or funeral and wedding attendees.  from the collection of the New York Public Library.

Seven-year-old Valance Bynoe Jr. was playing with two friends in front of his house at around 11:00 on Saturday night, June 6, 1936.  Suddenly, three fleeing robbers ran by, followed by "Patrolman George Brown, Negro policeman attached to the 133rd Street Station," as reported by The Daily Worker.  Brown fired off three shots.  One hit Bynoe in the head and another struck 43-year-old Preston Best, who was exiting his home, in the shoulder.  The New York Age reported, "The policeman immediately gave up the chase and rushed the victims to the hospital in a commandeered taxicab."  The little boy did not survive.

On June 8, The Daily Worker reported, "Little Valance Bynoe, Jr., seven-year-old Negro schoolboy...lies dead in his home today, the second child victim of police guns in Harlem in a month."  The boy's funeral was held in Grace Gospel Chapel on the evening of June 9.

The church's auditorium was the scene of gospel meetings, cultural events and civic meetings for decades.  Then, in 1982 a demolition permit was issued for the property.  The congregation razed their building--one of the few Vertner W. Tandy designs extant in Harlem--to be replaced by a red brick, barn-like structure completed in 1984.

image via gracegospelchapelnyc.org