The Lost 1873 Church of the Disciples -- Madison Avenue at 45th Street

A sliver of the old Grand Central Terminal can be seen to the extreme right, behind the riot of domes and towers known as the Madison Avenue Church of the Disciples -- stereopticon view from the NYPL Collection

According to the 1895 The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, George Hughes Hepworth had a calling.  “Early in life he was destined by his mother to be a preacher,” said the article.

The clergyman and journalist emerged from Harvard in 1853 and later furthered his studies at Cambridge.  Purposeful and driven, he headed the newly organized Church of the Unity in Boston in 1857, spearheading the construction of the new church.  Before long, the church was among the most prominent and wealthy in the Boston area.  Hepworth devised a popular concept of “Sabbath evening discourses” held in theaters that involed the audience in religious discussion.

When the Civil War broke out, he left his pastoral duties to serve the nation.  Beginning in 1862, he served as aide-de-camp to General Bank in Louisiana and subsequently oversaw the free labor system there during Reconstruction.

Returning to Boston, he resigned his post in 1869 to accept a pastorate in New York at the Church of the Messiah.  Three years later, he surprised his congregation on a Sunday morning by announcing that he had converted to Trinitarianism and had united with the Congregational church.  Hepworth held his services in Steinway Hall, drawing large crowds of worshipers.

Like everything else in Rev. Dr. Hepworth’s life, his plans for a permanent church building were aggressive and monumental.  Fund raising among the congregation—whose numbers included respected citizens like Ulysses S. Grant and Russell Sage—resulted in $100,000 towards the new structure.  Three lots at the southeast corner of Madison Avenue and 45^th Street were purchased in 1872 for $125,000 and Lawrence B. Valk was commissioned to design the structure.

Valk, whose office was at 229 Broadway, specialized in religious architecture and he had recently devised an innovative interior layout that provided unrestricted views of the minister to a large number of parishioners.   The architect would later advertise his concept in The Year Book of the Congregational Christian Churches of the United States.

He explained, “The attention of Pastors, Trustees, and Building Committees is called to the new form of circular seating on a bowled floor, combined with every requisite for comfort, seeing, hearing, and churchly appearance…Every regard paid in the cost to any required economy, and in all cases the cost will be guaranteed for complete edifices.”

The building was completed a year later.  It was a dizzying assemblage of towers and domes, gables and entrances.  Although the membership was just 800, the church was designed to hold 2,500.  Inside, congregants sat in 368 pews covered in crimson damask.  Their ten rows gently radiated downward as an amphitheater toward the pulpit platform.  The organ itself cost the congregation $125,000—a sum equal to the purchase price of the lots--and The Sun noted, “In the pastor’s study are appliances for private gymnastics.”

The expensive organ with its tiara of trumpets and elaborate cabinet contributed to the financial problems of the church.

The Church of the Disciples was announced to be totally fire-proof.  This was due to the thick brick and stone walls and the exceptional roof.  In the 1870s, most upper-class churches closed for the summer months while their parish members were off in Newport or other fashionable resorts.  This was no doubt a relief for those attending the Church of the Disciples, for the dome and roof were constructed of corrugated iron.

The new church was dedicated on April 3, 1873 to an overflow crowd.  “Ushers in full dress, with flowers in their buttonholes, took pains to accommodate all to the best of their ability, but a large number had to stand through the service,” reported The Sun. 

The newspaper was taken with the floral decorations.  “On the wall behind the pulpit were trailing vines and right in the centre of the organ front was a rarely beautiful circle of flowers.  Around the platform were literally hundreds of bouquets in stands and hot-house plants in carefully wrapped pots.  The mingled colors were beautiful beyond description, and after the service hundreds waited to examine the flowers.”

Even on this joyous occasion, Hepworth recognized a potential problem: money.  The country was seize by the Financial Panic of 1873 following a series of earlier economic recessions.  He admonished his flock, “The furniture is not all paid for.  They could not sit at ease at their table when they knew the furniture was not theirs.”  He asked those gathered to “give largely because their indebtedness was large, but that would easily be taken care of if they would stand by the work.”

Indeed, the $100,000 already raised did not pay for the land, let along the additional $150,000 that the building cost.  It would be an on-going problem for the church.

A stereopticon view published by E. & A. T. Anthony & Co. was entitled "Front of Dr. Hepworth's Church" -- NYPL Collection

The Congregationalists were a step apart from other Christian sects, and Hepworth would strongly impress his ideology into his congregants.  The New-York Tribune noted on June 24, 1875:

  

The Church of the Disciples also bears strongly the impress of the peculiar mind of its founder.  Its members are apt to be logical, argumentative Christians; each individual being driven to the Bible for his doctrines, an exceptional familiarity with Holy Writ is the rule among them; and as there is necessarily a great diversity in these doctrines, each man stands ready to defend the peculiar faith that is in him at the shortest notice.  Religious training of this kind is an education in itself, which fact offers an explanation of the exceptionally small number of illiterate members of the sect.

On February 14, 1879, the Rev. Dr. George Hepworth resigned as pastor of the Madison Avenue Church of the Disciples.  The financial troubles of the church had become too great a burden and he could go on no more.  

In his resignation letter, he said that after erecting the enormous building, “Just then the financial crisis through which the whole country has just passed struck us like a sudden blow form an unseen hand, and the difficulties of the enterprise were largely increased…There seemed to be nothing before us but financial ruin.  Death came into our ranks and removed one upon whom we had the right to depend.  Business difficulties compelled a large number to withdraw their active and much-needed support in order to attend to their own affairs…My own heart was well-nigh broken.  Still, though doing all we could, the dreadful hour came, and we tearfully saw our church building pass into other hands.”

Hepworth said the church needed a pastor with business acumen.  “I honestly believe that a minister can be found, gifted in a direction in which I am not gifted—for I am only too sensible of my lack of ability in the practical administration of a church of this kind—under whose guidance this organization may be compacted and solidified, as result which I most earnestly pray for.”

Hepworth’s prayers would not be answered.

On January 4, 1881 the church applied for a name change to Madison Avenue Congregational Church.  Gideon S. Palmer, a deacon, explained to the courts that the change was intended to “express its position denominationally.”  But there were other, larger, problems for the church.

With Hepworth gone, infighting began and the enormous debt continued to haunt the church.  The new pastor, Rev. W. R. Davis, resigned, telling The Sun on December 20, 1881 that he wanted “to preach in a church which is free from debt, and this church has a debt of $80,000 hanging over it.”

By 1884, the combative nature of the Trustee meetings was public knowledge, with The New York Times reporting on “some sharp talk” and Gideon Palmer saying that “noisy demonstrations, catcalls, and shouting, rendered impossible the orderly transaction of any business by the Church members.”

It had become obvious to the church members by January 1886 that there was no way out of the problem other than to sell the building.  The New York Times reported on January 3, “The attendance at the Sunday services did not seem compatible with the size of the auditorium, and, as the expense of maintaining the building was so great and the chance of increasing the membership so slight, the members came to the conclusion that the best thing to be done under the circumstances was to get a smaller church.”

Only five months later, on May 29, 1886, the property was conveyed to the Gospel Tabernacle on the condition that the property would be used solely for church and evangelical purposes for five years.  It was an unfortunate transaction for the Tabernacle.

A year later Mrs. Elizabeth J. Scott, who held the mortgage of $80,000, foreclosed on the property.  On August 2, 1887 the building was offered at auction.  Ironically, the winning bid was $23,000 which, coupled with the mortgage, totaled $103,000 and was placed by the Gospel Tabernacle.  The  New York Times noted that the amount “is much less than the property is worth.  It is understood that the Trustees will hold it in the hope of making a private sale at a fair value.”

Seven months later a headline in the New York Tribune called the building “A White Elephant.”  The March 9, 1888 article noted, “It was said yesterday by members of the Tabernacle that the location of the building is bad and that the congregation made a fatal mistake in going there.”

In this, one of the earliest photographs of the church, the southwest corner of 45th and Madison Avenue is still undeveloped.

The Gospel Tabernacle finally solved the problem by selling the building in June 1888 to the Manhattan Athletic Club.  The New York Times reported, “The officers of the club say that as soon as title to the property can be perfected, about Aug. 1, plans will be immediately put into operation for the construction of a clubhouse superior to anything of the kind in the country.”

Before long Dr. Hepworth’s extravagant and exotic church was demolished--a victim of its own expense.

Richard Morris Hunt's 1874 Nos. 478-482 Broadway

photo by Alice Lum

In the middle of the 19th century a must-have for any respectable Victorian household was a piano-forte. In the 1860s piano merchants clustered in the Broadway area, providing ease of shopping for potential buyers. Among these, Chickering & Sons was located at 295 Broadway; Lighte, Newton & Bradbury was a 423 Broadway and Decker & Company had showrooms at 419 Broome Street, a block east of Broadway.

In 1862 J. P. Halle & Co. “removed to their new ware rooms” at 478 Broadway. Here they sold 7-octave rosewood pianos which, according to their ads, were “destined to revolutionize the whole piano business. For durability, beauty of tone and touch, as well as in style of finish, they are unequaled; and nothing of the kind has ever before been offered in this country that will compare with them in prices $225, $250 and $275.”

The land on which J. P. Halle & Company’s building stood was owned by the Roosevelt family. The family had a long tradition in the real estate business. Rising from a distinguished line of Dutch settlers, the Roosevelts made their fortunes as successful merchants, and later erecting numerous speculative buildings.

Within a decade the neighborhood was changing as high-end apparel merchants crept in. Lawyer James Henry Roosevelt, who founded the Roosevelt Hospital, bequeathed the land at Nos. 478, 480 and 482 to the institution. In 1873 the hospital commissioned Richard Morris Hunt to design a commercial and loft building on the site. J. P. Halle & Co. and its pianos were about to go.

Hunt had already designed several substantial structures including the Stuyvesant Apartments (New York’s first apartment building) and the Presbyterian Hospital. Before the end of the century he would be renowned for such buildings as the Tribune Building, the vast Vanderbilt Newport cottages of The Breakers and Marble House, and the base of the Statue of Liberty.

For No. 478-482 Broadway, which would be known for a short time as the Roosevelt Building, he turned to the currently-popular cast iron façade. But while other architects were using the material to mimic stone; Hunt broke away in a radical departure, using the versatility of the iron to enhance the function of the structure.

Completed in 1874, the wide, five-story building was ground-breaking. Architectural Record praised it as “the most serious attempt to utilize the almost unlimited strength of the material.” The reference was to Hunt’s use of slender colonettes between the windows of the second through fourth floors which allowed for great expanses of glass; impossible in a masonry building.

Hunt provided sumptuous amounts of light inside by his expanses of glass -- photo by Alice Lum

Hunt used a Neo-Grec base of four chunky pilasters to support the airy mass above. Two enormous three-story columns, flanked by matching pilasters, rose to lacy, openwork screens that created pseudo-arches below the fifth floor. Stubby pilasters supported the flat cornice where delicate, openwork brackets branched out to be “relished,” as suggested by the AIA Guide to New York City over a century later.

Delicate, lacy iron screens pretend to be spandrels, giving the illusion of arched windows -- photo by Alice Lum

The building, shaped like a chubby L, extended to No. 40 Crosby Street where the triple-arched design carried over in a baby-brother size.

Three stores made up the street level.

The ground floor was divided into three distinct shops, while full floors were available above. As the neighborhood filled with textile and apparel companies, so did the Roosevelt Building. One of the first tenants, in 1874, was Collins, Downing & Co., importers and jobbers of woolens. At the time it was the oldest established firm in the business, having begun in 1842.  It opened its store at No. 478.

New York’s Great Industries announced that the new space rendered the firm “one of the finest stores on the main thoroughfare of the metropolis and located in the most central section of the wholesale trade.”

“The immense salesrooms are handsomely fitted up and are well lit, while for variety, freshness and completeness of assortment, the stock of woolens here displayed has few equals, and no superiors in America,” said the article.

Collins, Downing & Co. kept a team of twelve to fifteen buyers traveling globally to purchase woolen goods. “The firm makes a prominent specialty of importing the finest lines of foreign goods and handle the output of many of our leading domestic manufacturers,” the writer said.

Not all the publicity for Collins, Downing & Co. was as positive, however. Ten years after moving in, on April 8, 1884, a “handsomely dressed woman, with pale, clear-cut features and light golden” stormed into the store with a friend and demanded of Silas Downing to see his son, Forest.

Although she was told he was not in, she spotted him in the back of the store. “A moment afterward a sharp slap was heard,” reported The New York Times the following day.

Then things got worse. Forest Downing pushed the screaming women through the store and thrust her onto the street. She came back. Downing tossed her out again.

She came back.

By now a small crowd had gathered outside, attracted by the commotion. Silas Downing ordered the woman out, accusing her of coming merely to make a disturbance.

“Your son,” shouted the woman, “has insulted me. He said I was his mistress, and he must take it back or I won’t go out.”

Eventually police were called and the woman, who claimed to be Mrs. Savvillar Downing, was taken away.

The firm appeared in the press gain four years later when Frederick Davis, a 20-year old clerk, slit his right wrist in a suicide attempt at his home at 159 West 23rd Street on a Saturday night. The young man was arrested and held for trial, charged with “suicidal intent.”

But it was not only Collins, Downing & Co. that ran into problems here. Hammerslough & Brothers was a wholesale dealer in men’s and youth’s clothing. The firm hired Bernard Russell as its head salesman with the handsome salary of $5,000 a year. But in 1883 “he was found to be a gambler, a dabbler in stocks, and infatuated with women,” according to The Times, so he was fired.

Russell was one step ahead of the company, however.  Prior to his dismissal, he made copies of the store keys. On Sundays and holidays he would enter No. 478 and help himself to the stock. Police arrested him on the evening of January 7, 1885 at Koster & Bial’s music hall “while he was in the company of a woman.”

Russell confessed to stealing 200 coats, worth from $2,000 to $2,500, and 700 yards of silk.

At No. 478 in 1897 was Rieser & Company, sellers of lace curtains “of every known make.” The company advertised that “special attention is called to our large line of Real Renaissance All Lace Sash Curtains at extremely low prices.”

As the turn of the century arrived, other tenants included Cole & Williams, manufacturers of plush and celluloid cases and novelties; Voss & Stern (Philip Voss sold laces and embroideries while Isaac Stern handled curtains and veilings); and Garner Sons & Co., jobbers of ribbons. While Louis Gartner and his sons dealt primarily in the very feminine product of silk ribbons, J. Gartner used the address as well for his business of breeding Great Danes.

The pencil-thin colonettes along the fifth floor were attached to the facade by delicate iron openwork -- photo by Alice Lum

The building continued to attract the apparel trade into the 20th century. In 1919 The American Hatter announced that Max Kreienbuhl opened his office here on August 1.  Kreienbuhl represented foreign manufacturers including Italian “Milan, five-end and fancy braids;” Fratelli Ballerini’s line of “Leghorns, pedal and fancy bodies for the men’s and women’s hat trade;” and was hoping at the time to take on a Japanese line of hats and braids.

In 1989, as the Cast Iron District experienced a renaissance and trendy shops and boutiques moved in, the Upper East Side florist Madderlake took over the 5,000 square foot ground floor—now opened up as a single retail space. Called Pure Madderlake the upscale store also sold antique furniture and, according to New York Magazine, “lots of everything, old and new, for the table top.”

Today, appropriately, No. 478 Broadway is home to an apparel store – the British megastore Topshop that fills four full levels.

Although the Architectural Record praised Hunt’s design and at least one modern critic has called it “one of the most significant iron-front buildings in the world;” No. 478-482 Broadway receives mixed reviews.

In 1988 New York Times writer Michal Kimmelman said of it, “It is inventive, if only partly successful,” and authors Edmund Vincent Gillon and Henry Hope Reed in their “Beaux-Arts Architecture in New York,” said “all in all, it is more a curiosity than an historical building.”

The building is, however, a crowd-pleaser.  Its clean, well-preserved façade demands attention, if not critical acclaim, and it represents one of the few extant Richard Morris Hunt buildings in Manhattan.

The Lost 1763 Beekman Mansion "Mount Pleasant" -- 50th Street and 1st Avenue

from the collection of the New York Public Library

In 1763 Gerardus (James) Beekman’s country estate, Mount Pleasant, was completed.  The house sat on a rise overlooking Turtle Bay on the East River.  To the south was John Watt’s “Rose Hill” (where 29th Street and Park Avenue intersect today), and John Murray’s country seat “Inclenberg” (the block between 36th and 37th Streets on Park Avenue now).  Further north were the mansions of the Schermerhorns, Lawrences, Rhinelanders and other wealthy New Yorkers.

Beekman was a dry goods merchant and a descendant of William Beekman, who was highly involved in the governing of New Amsterdam alongside Governor Peter Stuyvesant.  James Beekman's city house was at 240 Queen Street (now Pearl Street), but during the oppressive summer months the family escaped to the open countryside of Mount Pleasant.

The exterior of the mansion simulated the old Dutch colonial manses of a century earlier.  Constructed of thick wooden planks and brick, it rose two-and-a-half stories tall above a high basement.  The attic sat beneath a Dutch-style hipped roof.  As The New York Times described it in 1872, “he chose to indulge the whim of uniting the homely Dutch cottage of his forefathers with all that the world then presented of luxury and comfort.”  Formal gardens wrapped around the mansion which had the first greenhouse in America.  It contained orange trees and oleander among other scarce plants.

from the collection of the New York Public Library

The elegant interiors were in stark contrast to the relative plainness of the exterior.  A century later, Scribner's Monthly described spacious rooms as “adorned with black marble mantels bearing elaborate carvings of scroll and foliage.  The fireplaces were ornamented with Dutch tiles, representing Scriptural subjects.”  Regarding the decorative elements, the article said, “Nothing more costly could be found in the colony, and it bore the additional merit of having been imported across the ocean.”

Four of these 18th Century panels were removed from the house by the Beekman family before the demolition.

In the dining room, 17th century-style carved oak pediments surmounted the doors, which were flanked by Tuscan columns, and the ornate carved oak fireplace rose to the ceiling.

D. T. Valentine's 1861 Manual depicted the "Blue Room" as the artist envisioned it around the time of the Revolution -- from the collection of the New York Public Library

The carved railings of the staircase were capped with solid mahogany banisters and upstairs the sitting rooms and bedrooms were decorated with superb molded plaster of paris ceilings and Dutch-tiled fireplaces.

Here the Beekmans entertained their neighbors.  It was an elite and close-knit group.  Historian Martha Joanna Lamb in her 1877 History of the City of New York pointed out, “Drawing-rooms were not filled to suffocation by a promiscuous crowd unknown to each other and scarcely known to the host and hostess.  The guests were all of one class, and personally acquainted.  The majority of them were related by blood and marriage.”

James Beekman and his family traveled from their city house to Mount Pleasant in this carriage -- New-York Historical Society

Although she described the social atmosphere of these gatherings as, “genial and agreeable with great freedom of conversation,” she was equally quick to mention that there “were certain formalities, however, which were never ignored; and the etiquette of foreign courts was observed with a nicety which we, of this later and more democratic generation, can scarcely comprehend.”

Two years after the house was completed, Beekman added the attached kitchen.  But within a decade, the idyllic life at Mount Pleasant was shattered by the American Revolution. As Washington retreated from the disastrous Battle of Brooklyn in 1776, he stopped at the mansion for a few hours and, from here, issued orders for the Continental Army to take up positions at Harlem.  The General warned the Beekman family of the impending danger and prompted them to flee.

Rushing to evacuate before the British arrived, the family gathered their valuable household goods like the silver plate and flatware and stashed them in a secret closet built into an upstairs room.  As Washington left, so did the Beekmans, unsure if they would ever see Mount Pleasant again.

The mansion was taken over as headquarters of General William Howe.  Here, in an upstairs bedroom, John Andre slept before sneaking off to meet Benedict Arnold--the mission that would cost him his life.

Nearly a century later, D. T. Valentine's 1861 Manual depicted Andre in his room at Mount Pleasant -- from the collection of the New York Public Library

Later, Nathan Hale was arrested in Huntington, Long Island and brought to Mount Pleasant on September 21, 1776.  General Howe dispensed with a court martial, telling Hale that he would be executed in the morning.  Howe gave the revolutionist the opportunity to write letters to his mother and sister.

Hale spent the night in one of the bedrooms and in the morning was hanged from a butternut tree on the property.  The provost-marshal, Captain Cunningham, refused him the services of a clergyman, denied his the use of a Bible, and while Hale watched, he destroyed the letters the doomed man had written to his family.

In 1780, the English Governor Sir Henry Clinton turned the house over to Baroness Reidesel, the wife of the Major General of the Hessians, who was being held prisoner at Saratoga.  The Baroness wrote extensively of the estate, describing the beauties of the farm with its peaches, grapes and apricots, and of the renowned gardens and the well-appointed interiors.  The residence, she said, “left nothing for a tenant to desire.”

Finally, in November 1783, the Beekmans returned to Mount Pleasant.  Despite the many people who had used it, it was perfectly intact.  Beekman and his wife rushed to the hidden upstairs closet where, to their delight, all their costly treasures were still untouched.

The irritated Beekman sent a rent bill to the British Government for the use of both Mount Pleasant and the city house.

In 1840 the house was in danger.  As the city’s grid plan of streets and avenues inched northward, Mount Pleasant sat squarely in the course of 51st Street.  There were no exceptions made for historic structures sitting in the path of progress.

Unwilling to see the old family home destroyed, the Beekmans spent several thousand dollars moving it a block to the south. A new foundation was created on a high rocky outcropping twenty feet above the sidewalk at 50th Street and First Avenue and the house was carefully moved.  The extensive formal gardens were gone as were the orchards and greenhouse; but the unique structure was preserved.

The tall lower level was removed when the house was moved to 50th Street -- collection of the New York Public Library

By the end of the Civil War, the Beekmans no longer used Mount Pleasant.  It was leased to a dentist, Dr. Morey, and his wife, who accepted their positions as caretakers and historians with gusto.  The Moreys, rare examples of historic preservationists at the time, spent considerable amounts of their own money in architectural forensics.  They had the walls carefully scraped down so the original colors could be reproduced–cream and chocolate colors in the hall and library, for instance.

But history and architecture in 1874 could not compete with land values.  The house high above 50th Street with its deteriorating picket fence stood in the way of urban development.

As the wrecking crew began demolishing Mount Pleasant on April 20, 1874, The New York Times remarked, “The encroachments of modern progress have decreed its destruction and people have failed to realize the propriety of a country seat at Fifty-first street…For years the old house has stood in its isolated position, marking the advances of that tide of progress which has at last surrounded and overwhelmed it.  There is now no Beekman country seat; it is among the things of the past.  The destroyer commenced the work of its demolition…and the relics of its existence are shapeless and unrecognizable.”

The Dutch tiles from some of the mantels were removed and the drawing room was dismantled to be preserved by the New-York Historical Society.  And then the house that played so an integral part in the American Revolution was smashed to the ground.

The New York Times reporter lamented the loss of yet another historic New York property.  “But its vicissitudes are now over; its career is ended; and having been connected with some stirring events in the history of the country, it is at length blotted out for ever.”

The Lost 1857 New York Historical Society Building

The New York Historical Society in 1895 -- King's Photographic Views of New York, author's collection

In 1804 the United States was only 28 years old.  New York City, on the other hand, was 190 years old. Accordingly John Pintard, the secretary of the American Academy of Fine Arts, conceived of an institution dedicated to the history of the city that included a library, lecture hall and museum of artifacts.

The most prominent citizens of the city joined in the effort and within a few years the New York Historical Society boasted a collection of thousands of books, along with oil portraits, engravings, maps, almanacs and historical documents.

The Society bounced around different venues for nearly half a century, finally using rooms provided by New York University until its collections grew so large it required a building of its own.  On December 7, 1853, members agreed on a plot of land at the corner of Second Avenue and 11th Street, in one of the most fashionable residential areas of the city.  Wealthy neighbors had donated $5000, just under half of the price, towards the purchase of the lot provided it be used for the erection of the Society building.  An advertisement for the submission of architectural plans had already been placed and designs were being received.

Other locations that had been considered but which were turned down were the triangular plot at Broadway and Fifth Avenue where the Flatiron Building would later rise and the southwest corner of Broadway and 20th Street upon which Lord & Taylor’s grand emporium would be built.

The Second Avenue site, however, in 1853 was choice.  Across the street was St. Mark’s Church and the mansions of the city’s leading families like Stuyvesant, Rutherford, Fish, Livingston and Chanler surrounded it.

On October 17, 1855, the cornerstone was laid.  The press reported that “the stone was so large that fears were entertained that it would break down the platform, but by the aid of a derrick it was placed in position.”

Architects Mettam & Burke had won the commission for their two-story Italianate stone building.  With the memories of the Great Fire that had destroyed most of downtown New York only two decades earlier, the building was intended to be fire-proof. Cast iron staircases, hollow walls and iron beams were used.  “Then the boldness of the Society in venturing upon the construction of a fire-proof building, and carrying it so rapidly to a point from which completion will be an easy job, certainly belongs to this and no past age,” said The New York Times a year later on October 9, 1856.

In the same article, The New York Times poked fun at the Society in general saying “Whether or not the Historical Society is a fogy-ish association has been a good deal agitated for three years past.  Those who never attend its meetings are quite satisfied that it is; those who do attend are divided…when half the members sleep through half the discourse, and only wake to applaud the conclusion, one would certainly get the impression that the Society was slightly fossilized.”

The “easy job” of completing the structure seemed less so as the years dragged by.  The new building was not finished for nearly three years; but it was worth the wait.  Dedicated on November 3, 1857, the $85,000 building was completely paid for when the doors opened.

“The building is solid and substantial,” said The New York Times, “but has a light and graceful look, as best becomes an institution where sound historical learning and the amenities of art are fostered together.”  The newspaper asserted it was “built of a dark drab-colored stone, brought from Portsmouth, New-Brunswick, the first of the kind ever introduced into this City.”

The Society Building as it appeared in 1868 -- Valentine's Handbook of New York, from the NYPL Collection

A tall porch with Doric columns sheltered the entranceway and formed a handsome balcony above.  A stone balustrade fence enclosed the grassy yard and cast iron gas lamps illuminated either side of the approaching walkway.

The first floor housed a 50-foot by 65-foot lecture room capable of seating 600 persons.  Upstairs was the Library and Art Gallery under a great 47-foot high glass dome that flooded the space with light.  “The proportions are good; the alcoves and shelves are durable and elegant; the decorations in white and gold are chaste and pretty,” said The New York Times.

The refined exterior easily slipped into the residential nature of the neighborhood by not appearing “commercial.”  At the dedication ceremony (which was also the 53rd anniversary of the Society’s founding) Benjamin R. Winthrop presented the “Washington chair,” made from wood used in the house at Pearl and Cherry Streets which was the first home of George Washington after his inauguration.

As donors gave their art collections, the museum area of the Society became more and more eclectic.  Finally the members decide to hone the collections to only those items that were specific to New York City history.  Many of the museum’s collection of paintings and art became the basis of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 1860s.

With the 20th century came change to the once fashionable area around the Historical Society building.  As mansions were razed for commercial loft buildings, the Society building was surrounded by a congested manufacturing district.  A move uptown was deemed necessary.

In 1908, York & Sawyer designed a solemn Beaux-Arts building on the west side of Central Park and the New York Historical Society moved out of the dignified building that had housed its lectures and exhibitions for nearly 60 years.  The building sat empty until being sold in 1912 to be converted into a newsboys’ club.  The main hall was turned into a gymnasium.

Within a few decades the stone Italianate structure was gone, replaced by a non-descript brick apartment house.