The 1931 Madison Ave. Baptist Church / Roger Williams Hotel - 129-131 Madison Avenue

 

In the early 1920s, a new concept began sweeping metropolitan areas--the "skyscraper church."  Congregations from coast to coast were demolishing their old structures and erecting apartment or office buildings that incorporated a ground floor church space.  In theory, the congregation would reap tremendous income from the rental properties.  It was a notion that would catch the attention of the Madison Avenue Baptist Church at the southeast corner of Madison Avenue and 31st Street.

The 1855 Madison Avenue Baptist Church, from the collection of the New York Public Library

Organized in 1838 as the Rose Hill Church, in 1849 it changed its name to the Lexington Avenue Baptist Church.  Three years later it moved into a red brick structure at 154 Lexington Avenue.  Only six years later, in 1858, the congregation relocated into a Romanesque Revival-style structure at Madison Avenue and 31st Street.  The church was renamed the Madison Avenue Baptist Church.  

In 1929, with the Great Depression ravaging the country, the congregation faced a decision.  The trustees leased its property to the newly formed Madison Avenue-Thirty-first Street Corporation.  It demolished the vintage church and hired architects Jardine, Murdock & Wright to design a 15-story residential hotel on the site.  A restriction in the deed demanded that the new building would include a sanctuary for the Madison Avenue Baptist Church.  Rev. John Sanders Bone later explained it was the only way "to maintain itself in an area where it could have survived because of the terrific costs, and to provide a 'witness' in the business community in the heart of the city."

Perhaps as a nod to the former church structure, Jardine, Murdock & Wright designed the hotel-church in a 1930s take on Romanesque.  The sanctuary was located at the southern part of the property, with a three-story limestone face and an impressive arched entrance.  The stained glass windows from the demolished church, executed by Franz Xavier Zettler sometime after 1870, were salvaged and installed into the new sanctuary.

On October 12, 1931, The New York Times reported, "The new Madison Avenue Baptist Church, built into the lower floors of the Roger Williams apartment hotel...was formally opened yesterday morning."  The hotel was named for Roger Williams, who founded the First Baptist Church in America in 1638.

The entrance to the Roger Williams Hotel was on East 31st Street.  Its apartments would be called "studios," today.  An advertisement in the Columbia Spectator on May 12, 1932 described, "one room apartments, attractively furnished" with "kitchenette."  Rents were "$40 per month and up," or about $892 in 2025 terms.

Tenants saw a rent hike the following year.  An ad in The New York Sun in 1933 was titled, "You Get All This for $50," and touted, "attractive living room, tile bath, cooking facilities with gas without charge, also electric connections.  Electric refrigeration.  Ample closet space.  Maid service optional."

Despite their relatively small accommodations, the apartments filled with middle-class professionals, like literary agent Minnie Hoover Linton, who moved in on October 28, 1933 with her cat.  Linton, who according to The New York Times, was "distantly related to former President Hoover," was the sister of J. Edgar Hoover.  After having worked as an editor at McGraw-Hill Publishing Company for ten years, in 1929 she co-founded her agency with Nell Martin.

Also an author, Minnie Linton had completed six chapters of her current novel, The Rooming House, when she moved in.  

The 59-year-old was almost totally deaf, a result of an explosion in The Los Angeles Times building where she had worked as a proof-reader.  (Twenty-one other workers were killed.)  Because of her condition, she carried an ear trumpet.

The evening after moving into the Roger Williams, Minnie attempted to visit Nell Martin, but she was out.  She had almost made it back home at 10:00 when she was struck and killed at the corner of Madison Avenue and 31st Street.   

Novelist Henry Miller and writer Anaïs Nin moved into the Roger Williams Hotel in November 1934, according to Robert Ferguson's Henry Miller, A Life.   Ferguson explains, "The main achievement of his stay at the Roger Williams Apartments...was to finish Black Spring, the collection of autobiographical pieces that would eventually become his second published work."

Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin (original source unknown)

Sylvia Morris lived here in 1935 when she suffered embarrassing, nationwide press coverage.  Her repeated visits to Dr. Winfield Scott Pugh raised the suspicions of Pugh's wife, Irma Mary.  One afternoon she was at her husband's office when Sylvia Morris was taken into the examination room.  She later told a judge that there was "complete silence" in the room.  "When other patients were there I always heard commotion."  

Irma Mary Pugh went outside, obtained a stepladder, and peered into her husband's examination room.  In court on January 23, 1936, she pointed to Sylvia Morris and testified, "I saw that woman laying nude on the operating table.  My husband was in his undershirt," as reported in The Decatur Daily Review.

Amelia Sackett moved to New York from Philadelphia after being separated from her lithographer husband, Harry A. Sackett.  She found a job in a doctor's office in Brooklyn and  signed a lease for an apartment on the seventh floor with a friend here in 1939.  Her attempt to move on from her divorce was not successful and she suffered depression.  On November 23, 1939, Amelia rushed toward the open apartment window.  Her roommate grasped her clothing, but the fabric tore and the 66-year-old plunged to her death.

Living here in the post-World War II years was Florence Lundborg.  Born in 1870 in San Francisco, she studied at the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art and in Europe.  An established illustrator and muralist, among her works were murals for the Wadleigh High School in Manhattan and the Curtis High School on Staten Island.  Lundborg died during her sleep in her apartment here on January 18, 1949 at the age of 78.

Florence Lundborg from the collection of the National Archives and Records Administration.

By the third quarter of the century, the Roger Williams (which now accepted only transient guests) had declined.  The management began renovations in 1970, and on October 23, New York Magazine wrote, 

 

It is small and not very attractive--but adequate.  The tiny lobby and many of the rooms are now being redecorated, and the dingy hallways do lead to some pleasant rooms.  Those on the lower floors had been remodeled with wood paneling and all-new bathrooms.  The idea behind the renovation is to achieve the modern, efficient look of a motel room.  That they succeed may be either a plus or a minus in your book.

 

At the time of the article, an unrenovated single room ranged from $14.50 to $19.50 per night.  A remodeled room began at $16.50 (about $129 today).

In 1985, the Red Cross took over three floors of the Roger Williams as an "emergency family center" that could accommodate 30 homeless families, according to The New York Times on June 23.  The Red Cross facility remained at least through 1987.

On December 18, 1992, The New York Times published an article on Manhattan hotels that cost $150 or less per night.  Calling the Roger Williams Hotel a "simple, tidy establishment," it said, "The furnishings are just a step up from college dormitories, but the beds are decent and the prices remarkable."  A room cost $55 per night.

In 1995, the Madison Avenue Baptist Church leased the hotel to Bernard Goldberg, principal of the Gotham Hospitality Group.  Rev. Michael B. Easterling, the church's pastor, explained that of the eight operators who bid on the lease, "the Gotham Group has proposed the strongest renovation program."  The following year, the new proprietors initiated a year-long renovation.

Originally retaining the Hotel Roger Williams name, the renovated building was described in November 2001 by The New York Times saying, "Serene and spare, the 187-room hotel deftly blends European and Asian influences; shoji screens on the windows, Belgian linens on the beds."  The interior design by Rafael Viñoly included "a space for free chamber music performances."

In the renovation, the entrance to the hotel was moved from 31st Street to Madison Avenue.  Recently, the name was changed to Hotel AKA NoMad.

photographs by the author

The 1895 Equitable Life Bldg (Victory Tabernacle) - 252 West 138th Street

The entablature was purposely deep to accommodate the Equitable Life Assurance Company name; and it serves the same purpose today.

In 1890 developer David H. King, Jr. began construction on 78 residences "of a first-class character," known as the King Houses.  They would cover the entire block between Seventh  and Eighth Avenues (today Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, respectively) and 138th and 139th Streets, as well as the south side of  138th Street between the same avenues.  The following year he began work on a second row of houses on the opposite side of West 139th Street.

David King had purchased all the property from the Equitable Life Assurance Society, which provided his building loans as well.  The entire debt may have been too much for King to handle, for in 1895 he transferred title to 138 houses to the Equitable.

Now with a massive financial interest in the neighborhood, coupled with the rampant development of Harlem, the firm quickly hired the architectural firm of Jardine, Kent & Jardine to design an uptown branch office at No. 252 West 138th Street.  The plot was across the street from the southernmost row of King Houses.

The architects produced a delightful limestone faced building which was completed in 1895.  Although it was the height of a three-story structure, there were just two over-sized floors.  Its Renaissance Revival design featured a base of three bays separated by clustered Corinthian pilasters and skinny columns.  Stealing the show was the double-height, white marble Venetian Revival style window at the second floor.  Its columns upheld an exotic pierced tympanum that made the little building look, perhaps, more like a synagogue than a business building.  Two blind roundels with marble inserts, a carved frieze and a stone balustrade atop the cornice completed the striking design.

The Equitable Life Assurance Society moved its real estate departments into the new building.  From here foreclosures, property sales, and home and construction loans were handled for nearly three decades.  Then, in the summer of 1923, the firm sold its 22-foot wide building to real estate operators, who quickly resold it that August to the Coachmen's Union League Society.

At the time the demographics of Harlem was rapidly changing as Black residents who hoped to escape the prejudicial treatment of landlords downtown moved north.  The Coachmen's Union League Society was a beneficial and labor organization, founded following the murderous Draft Riots of 1863.  In his 2001 book In The Company of Black Men Craig Steven Wilder explains:

The Coachmen's League was founded in 1864 and possibly influenced by the death of driver Abraham Franklin, who was pulled from his coach, tortured, and murdered--his body then savagely mutilated and displayed--by an Irish mob during the 1863 Draft Riots.  The society's founders were Manhattan coachmen "fired with ambition and hopes, looking toward a new day of justice, freedom and achievement."

According to The Sun in 1895 it "took its name from the Union League Club, because that organization aided the colored people during the draft riots of '63."  By now the Society had 1,100 members.  In its November 1923 issue The Crisis noted that "not all of them [are] coachmen, however."  The article said "The society pays sick and death benefits and recently formed a ladies' auxiliary with a membership of 800."

Vertner Woodson Tandy (who coincidentally or not lived in one of the King Houses) was the first Black architect to gain membership to the American Institute of Architects.  The Society hired him to extend the building to the rear at a cost of $30,000 (nearly a half a million in today's dollars).  

Opportunity magazine, in its March 1924 issue, remarked on the society's name, falling victim to 20th century racism in doing so.  "The public may be surprised that in these days of automobiles such an organization could continue to exist.  It was organized by Negro coachmen back in 1864, when they were as plentiful as Negro chauffeurs are today."

The Coachmen's Union League Society's new headquarters contained a dining room, recreational spaces, meeting rooms and spaces which were available for local organizations to rent.  Among them was the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, which used a meeting hall on Sundays.

The building was often bright with lights and music as social events were held in its hall.  On September 24, 1932, for instance, The New York Age announced "A night of revelry is being arranged by [The Pioneer Five] for all those who attend their premier Fall Dansante at the Coachman's [sic] Hall, 252 West 138th street.  They are promising you good music, soft lights, beautiful women and last, but not least, delicious refreshments.  What more can be asked for by mere mortals?"

Other local groups leased space in the building.  On April 22, 1933 an announcement by the Colored Merchants' Association in The New York Age read "As quickly as possible we will convert a portion of the building at 252 West 138th Street into a convenient warehouse to profitably take care of the increasing demand for C.M.A. products."

The Colored Merchants' Association had been founded five years earlier in Montgomery, Alabama.  A cooperative of Black merchants, its members did joint advertising in local newspapers and worked together to boost Black-owned businesses.  On April 9, 1934 a newspaper announced that there would be a "Harlem Retail Grocers and the Colored Merchants Association joint boycott meeting" that evening.

On March 21, 1936 The New York Age reported on what may have been the last entertainment in the building as Coachmen's Hall.  A musical program had been given by the North Harlem Community Council which rented space in the building.

At the time the building had already been purchased by the American Legion for use as the Col. Charles Young Post No. 398.  The post was named after the first Black officer to attain the rank of colonel in the U. S. Army.  Young was, as well, the only Black graduate of West Point between 1887 and 1936.

The American Legion Hall is emblazoned on the entablature in 1941.  via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services

As the Coachmen's League had done, the American Legion leased space to outside groups.  On January 2, 1937, for instance, The New York Age reported that the North Harlem Community Council "entertained over 500 children Christmas morning at their headquarters, 252 West 138th street, and distributed candies and toys to all."  And on December 9, 1939 the newspaper reported "On Saturday evening we joined the number who strolled to the dance given by the Strollers Social Club at the American Legion Hall, 252 West 138th street--If you like the dances with a party atmosphere, then you will be right at home at this event."

Another group to rent rooms in the American Legion Hall by 1940 was the Negro Benevolent Society of the Department of Sanitation.  

Then in 1942 the structure that had always looked much like a church became one when the Victory Tabernacle Seventy-Day Christian Church moved in.  Established in 1934 it had worshiped in various spaces until now.  The dedicatory service was held on New Year's Day.  Stained glass now filled the windows and the interior was fitted up as a sanctuary.

During the congregation's nearly 80 years here the neighborhood has seen its ups and downs.  And through it all the church has maintained its outreach, offering Vacation Bible School, Youth Retreats to upstate New York, AIDS Education, and even an Asthma Action workshop for children.  

Over its diverse history Jardine, Kent and Jardine's delightful Victorian structure has been sympathetically cared for.

photograph by the author