The Lost St. John the Baptist (Epiphany) Church - 259 Lexington Avenue

 

from the collection of the new York Public Library

Cornelius Roosevelt Duffie Jr. was born on August 6, 1821.  He descended from old and distinguished New York families, including the Roosevelts, Bleeckers, and Baches.  (His mother, Helena Bleecker, the daughter of James Bleecker, died 11 days later after his birth.)  His father, Cornelius Sr., was the founder and first rector of St. Thomas's Church.

Cornelius Jr. graduated from Columbia College in 1841, and from the General Theological Seminary in 1845.  Three years later, after serving briefly as curate in Trinity Church, he founded the parish of St. John the Baptist in Murray Hill, "then the upper part of the city," according to the New-York Tribune decades late.  

Joseph Alfred Scovill, in his 1865 Old Merchants of New York, explained that Duffie's grandfather, John Duffie, had "owned a large parcel of land in Kip's Bay, now on the east side of Murray Hill, much of which still remains in the family."  Cornelius R. Duffie Jr. and his aunts donated a parcel at the northeast corner of  Lexington Avenue and 35th Street to the newly organized parish.  According to church historian David Clarkson in 1894, a "frame building" was erected for the small congregation.

(In his book, Scoville added, "The rumor in the vicinity goes that the church received its name from family affection and veneration for old John Duffee, who was a steady pillar deacon of the old First Baptist Church on Golden Hill.")

In 1856, the wooden church was demolished and "replaced by a handsome stone edifice designed by Frank Wills," according to David Clarkson.  Born in England in 1822, Wills had arrived in New York City in 1847 and quickly became the official architect for the New York Ecclesiology Society.  He was an early proponent of Gothic Revival and designed St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church in the style.  Anchored on the 35th Street corner by a muscular bell tower that was doubled in height by its soaring steeple, the church was faced in brownstone.  Pointed-arched openings, buttresses, and a central rose window carried out the Gothic design.  (St. John the Baptist would be one of Wills's last projects.  He died at the age of 35 in 1857, a year after submitting the designs.)

St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church sat among brownstone mansions.  The American Metropolis, 1897 (copyright expired)

In his 1897 The American Metropolis, Frank Moss described the church as, "a most enchanting little bit of architecture, and it is so placed on the hill as to show its proportions to the very best advantage."  The new edifice sat among the mansions of Murray Hill millionaires and, according to Moss, "its congregation was large, wealthy and influential."  The tranquility of the neighborhood and the congregation would soon be strained as the rumbles of war grew louder.  Frank Moss recounted:

...in the days that tried men's souls, and when a very large proportion of the district's population was in sympathy with rebellion and riot, that church and its membership stood firmly for the abolition of slavery and the perpetuity of the Union, and were a tower of strength for the National cause.  The young men of the congregation and the neighborhood enlisted for the war under its flag.

As was the case with many congregations, the women gathered to make bandages and send supplies to the Union army.  They also hand-stitched the American flag that hung over the church entrance.  "When Fort Sumter was fired on, the ladies made the flag and the men hoisted it upon the building, and there it flew continuously to the end of the war," recounted Moss.

During the draft riots of 1863, a mob descended on St. John the Baptist.  "A demand was made that the flag should be hauled down," wrote Moss.  A trustee, fearing that the church and parsonage would be burned, lowered the flag.  But another trustee, "ran in and raised it again."  At the end of the war, the flag was taken down and sealed in a glass-fronted case encased in a wall inside the church.

The 2,000-pound bronze bell that hung in the tower caused upheaval in the spring of 1882.  Jared M. Bell and his family lived across down the street at 248 Lexington Avenue.  He complained to Rev. Duffie about the loud clanging.  According to Bell, Duffie, "promised to abate the nuisance as far as lay in his power."  By May 13, as far as Bell was concerned, nothing had changed and he filed a complain with the Board of Health.  It said in part,

This hideous noise is utterly unnecessary to the worship of God, and...forms no part of it, and is simply a relic of the times when there were few if any watches or clocks in the community whereby people could learn the hour of repairing to the sanctuary.

Saying the tolling of the bell was "detrimental to public health and ruinous to property," Jared W. Bell sought to have it "abolished and forever prevented."  In the bell's defense, Rev. Duffie told a reporter from The New York Times that whenever a nearby resident was ill, the tolling of the bell was ceased and in one case had been silent for six weeks.  He knew of many residents "who were very fond of hearing the bell ring," he said.  (Because press coverage ended, it is unclear who won the battle of the bell.)

In 1893, St. John the Baptist merged with the congregation of the Church of the Epiphany.  The joined congregations used the Lexington Avenue structure, but took the name of the older congregation, Epiphany. (The Mission Church of the Epiphany was established in January 1833.)  Rev. Dr. Duffie remained as rector emeritus of the combined parishes.  Shortly afterward, he installed a stained glass window in the chancel as a memorial to his father, Rev. Cornelius Roosevelt Duffie, Sr.

After serving his parish for its entire existence, Rev. Dr. Cornelius R. Duffie died at his summer home in Leitchfield, Connecticut on July 8, 1900 at the age of 79.  In addition to his work here, he had been the chaplain of Columbia College for 25 years.  His funeral was held in the Church of the Epiphany on July 11.

The following year, Rev. Edward L. Atkinson was appointed rector of the Church of the Epiphany.  The 36-year-old was described by the New-York Tribune as, "Tall, slight and fair haired, and having an especially cheerful disposition."  In July the following year, he left for a two-month vacation, going first to visit priest friends in Manchester and Plymouth, Massachusetts before traveling to the Catskills.  A week later, on August 2, 1902, the New-York Tribune titled an article, "New-York Minister Drowned."

Atkinson was at a friend's summer cottage on Boot Pond near Plymouth.  The article said, "He went out rowing and fell overboard.  The body has not been recovered."

Apartment buildings had replaced high-stooped mansions by the Depression years.  from the collection of the Library of Congress.

By January 1908, when the Church of the Epiphany celebrated its 75th anniversary, the Murray Hill neighborhood had changed.  The Living Church, on February 1, commented, "The present Epiphany Church is located at Lexington Avenue and Thirty-fifth Street, with homes of the well-to-do on one side, and apartments of the not so well-to-do on the other."

The trend continued and on January 24, 1936, The New York Times remarked, "Vast changes have swept over that district in recent years, and the growing demands of trade have usurped much of the land formerly given over to private residences."  As a result, said the article, the Church of the Epiphany "will vacate within a few days its edifice at the northeast corner of Lexington Avenue and Thirty-fifth Street as the first step in its plan to sell the property and build a new church on the upper East Side."  The congregation would temporarily share St. Thomas Chapel at 230 East 60th Street before erecting a new building on York Avenue at 74th Street.

Two views of the interior during demolition.  from the collection of the Library of Congress.

Frank Wills's 1856 structure survived three more years, demolished in 1939 for an apartment building that remains.

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The Martyr's (or Soldiers') Monument - Trinity Churchyard

photo via waymarking.com

The first burial within the Trinity Churchyard on Broadway was in 1698.  By 1842 the grounds were filled and the sprawling Trinity Church Cemetery was established far uptown.  Nine years later the city proposed to extend Pine Street, which terminated at Broadway, to the Hudson River.  That would require taking a large slice from the northern hem of Trinity Churchyard.

It seems that the Trinity trustees turned to civic patriotism and sentiment to block what today would be called eminent domain.  On June 8, 1852 a meeting was held at City Hall to consider the erection of a monument to Revolutionary War prisoners of war in Trinity Churchyard, directly in the path of the proposed improvement project.  The church trustees noted, in part:

The remains of a large number of those heroic men who sacrificed their lives in achieving the independence of the United States, many of whom died while in captivity in the old Sugar House, are interred in Trinity churchyard in this city, and from the uniform attention and respect to the dead, which Trinity Church has observed, it is believed on suggestion it will cheerfully erect a suitable monument to their memory.

The "Sugar House" had been a large building owned by the Livingston family, appropriated by the British as a prison.  More than half a century after the war, New Yorkers still remembered the horrors inflicted on the prisoners.  One aged survivor, Jonathan Gillett, gave his account to the New York Herald.  The newspaper recounted:

He spoke of many dying of starvation and disease during his imprisonment.  Almost every day one, and sometimes five or six, were carried out for burial.  The bodies were placed upon the ground, and sometimes frozen there before removed.  These detachments of their living comrades were employed in carrying them to the Bowery, near the freshwater pump, for interment.

The mayor found the church's sudden interest in memorializing the soldiers more than suspicious.  He appealed to Albany, saying, according to The Evening Post, that the erection of the monument "was undertaken for the avowed object of preventing Pine street from being carried through."  The city was unsuccessful and the plans for the monument forged ahead.  

Whether the soldiers were actually buried directly in the path of the proposed Pine Street project is uncertain, since their graves were not marked.  Nevertheless, the site chosen for the monument could not have been more emblematic.  The completed structure would stand like a sentinel behind the churchyard fence, directly across from Pine Street.

Trinity Church insisted that the location sat over the graves.  The Evening Post reported on January 5, 1854, "It is said that a portion of the yard, where the most of those brave men lie, was below the present surface, some sixteen feet about, at, or on a line with, or opposite, Pine street."   The article claimed that soldiers were buried upon soldiers.  "In fact, in that part of the yard, for more than sixteen feet, the ground is composed of human remains, quite decomposed, and nearly all ground to dust."

Trinity Church paid for the monument in full.  On August 5, 1853 the Semi-Weekly Tribune reported, "The Corporation of Trinity Church have appropriated $7,000 for the construction of the work, but this sum will not more than half complete it."  Assuming that the journalist was correct, the total cost would be equivalent to $478,000 today.

The trustees commissioned English-born architect Frank Wills to design the memorial.  He had immigrated to New York City in 1847 and soon became the official architect for the New York Ecclesiology Society.  Wills was especially known for his Gothic Revival designs and had trained under architect John Hayward, a master in the style.  Willis's imposing monument would blend perfectly with Richard Upjohn's  Gothic Revival style Trinity Church.

On August 5, 1853, a few months after construction had begun, the Semi-Weekly Tribune reported, "It will be of brown stone, and its height will be 73 feet.  The pedestal will be 16 feet square, and placed at the top of a series of steps 24 feet square at the bottom."  The article said that--at least originally--Wills intended that statues of military figures would adorn the buttresses.

That detail was not the only scaled-back aspect of the monument.  In 1872 John Francis Richmond described the Martyrs' Monument in his New York and Its Institutions, giving the final dimensions.  "It is a chaste Gothic structure of brown stone, standing on a granite foundation, about forty-five feet high, appropriately inscribed, and crowned with the American eagle."

from King's Handbook of New York City, 1893 (copyright expired)

Variously called the Martyrs' Monument and the Soldiers' Monument, for years the memorial was decorated on patriotic and military holidays.  On May 6, 1861, for instance, The Evening Post reported on Decoration Day observances.  (Later named Memorial Day, the holiday would not become official until after the Civil War.)  The article said, "The revolutionary monument in Trinity churchyard has been appropriately draped with white, red and blue, and four or five flags are to be raised."

photo by Edmund Vincent Gillon from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Half a century after the monument was completed, historian A. J. Bloor weighed in on the argument as to its exact purpose.  Writing in the New-York Tribune, he told readers of a proposal to extend Pine Street through Trinity Churchyard "shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War."  He said "Frank Wills, an excellent architect of the so-called Gothic school, was commissioned to design a 'monument to the prison ship martyrs' with which to block the way.'"  Bloor gave Willis a notable compliment, saying that the monument was "one of the not too many architectural gems of this city."

photo by Wally Gobetz

Nearly 170 years after its construction, the Martyrs' Monument no longer receives attention on Memorial Day or Veterans' Day, and few New Yorkers or tourists are aware of its role in the church-vs.-City Hall battle.  

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