The 1855 Mount Morris Watch Tower

 

photograph by Rolando Melendez

On September 4, 1839, the city purchased 20 acres far uptown on a rocky knoll that had been known by the Dutch as Slang Berg, or Snake Hill.  The cost of the remote, undeveloped land was $25,778, or just under $700,000 in 2025 terms.  The Snake Hill property was bounded by what today would be Madison and Mount Morris Avenues and 120th and 124th Streets.  It was a strategic spot--the hill's elevation gave sweeping, 360 degree views for miles.

An important feature of fighting fires in early 19th century Manhattan was bell (or watch) towers.  Manned around the clock, the tall structures were dotted around the city.  When a watcher caught sight of smoke or fire, he rang the alarm.

In 1853, Julius H. Kroehl had the position of "Engineer of Crystal Palace."  The massive cast iron-and-glass structure in what today is Bryant Park would contain New York's world's fair.  Kroehl's expertise in cast iron construction would be tapped by the city two years later for a project on Snake Hill.

James Bogardus had submitted a design for the Crystal Palace in 1852, which was rejected.  Now, in 1855, the city hired him to design a watch tower on Snake Hill and Julius H. Kroehl was contracted to execute the plans.  Bogardus designed an octagonal, four-story structure of cast iron.

Completed in 1857, The Evening World described it three decades later as "not a very attractive specimen of architecture."  The article continued, 

The lowest story is of closed sides, clapboarded and painted an olive green.  The second and third stories are open.  Eighty fluted iron columns support them.  The fourth story has the octagonal room.

The wooden room on the top floor was used by the watchman "to shield himself from the storm or chill of winter," said the article.  The Evening World explained, "When the tower was built it was a good way off from New York, and the whole country round was marsh and fields."  From the top, the viewer could see "The old Rhinelander Mansion...also the John Jacob Astor residence."

The first "bell-man" was Christopher Sieman, who had a crew of two.  "It was a political position which the Mayor had the disposal of," explained a successor later.  The three men's eight-hour tours guaranteed 24-hour vigilance.  

One of Sieman's "ringers" was Hugh Masterson, who was appointed just before the mayoral election in 1857.  He would not hold the job for long.  The New-York Tribune reported on January 7, 1858, "He was charged with having made a bet of $20 that Mayor [Daniel Fawcett] Tiemann would be defeated, for which he gave a bad $20 bill and refused to make the amount good."  The article said, "the Mayor concluded to remove him."

In 1860, James McCusker replaced Christopher Sieman.  His yearly salary was $1,000, or about $38,900 today.  In 1887, he reminisced to The Evening World:

Some one had to be there all the time.  It was not very comfortable, for it is cold up there in winter and hot in summer, and then a man was altogether to himself.  We used to be glad enough to welcome visitors.  They broke the monotony.

When a watcher, or ringer, saw smoke or fire, he pulled a lever that rang the massive bell that hung at the second level.  "They used to hear it in Westchester village, and that is six miles away," described McCuster in 1887.  He was the last ringer to toll that particular bell.  "I broke the bell once sounding the alarm for a fire over in Bloomingdale," he said.

The lonely room in which the watcher remained for eight hours at a stretch can be seen in this photo. Gas Logic, January 1922 (copyright expired)

In 1863, McCusker discovered that, "Barnum's circus, at Elm Park, was on fire."  He recalled, "At the second stroke of the fourth alarm I noticed that the bell was cracked."  Three months later, the Fire Commissioners installed a new bell, one-quarter of the size of the original.  Nevertheless, "The present bell can be heard as far as Fordham," said The Evening World on October 13, 1887.

With the establishment of the professional Metropolitan Fire Department in 1865, New York City's network of volunteer companies was abolished and the tower here was updated with "the new fire-alarm system," that incorporated a telegraph line.  Now the watcher pushed a button that would communicate to as many as eight uptown fire stations.

In its September 1908 issue, The Scrap Book recalled, "With the advent of the paid fire department the use of the structure as a watch-tower was abandoned, and it was turned into a curfew-tower."  That new purpose did not come right away, however.  The Evening World explained, 

The bell was not run for nearly a year, since it no longer served any purpose.  But the people complained.  They had been used to hearing it and liked the sound.  So it is now run three times a day by a fireman from the engine-house on One Hundred and Twenty-fourth street.  

As the "curfew tower," its bell tolled at 8 a.m., at noon, and at 9:00 p.m.  "Thus it served for long as a time-regulator for the district," said The Scrap Book.

The vacant tower took on another purpose, as well.  The Scrap Book recalled, "Then seats were arranged around the base, and the spot became a favorite rendezvous for the belles and beaus of the neighborhood...It was said that one-third of the marriages which occurred in upper New York were brought about at this lovers' rendezvous."

While the other watch towers throughout the city were demolished one-by-one, this one remained.  On October 13, 1887, The Evening World remarked, "So it stands there, the relic of the past system, without the hoariness of age to make it a moving spectacle.  There is no reason why it should ever be removed.  It adorns the hill top, and the young people sit on the seats around it in these pleasant October days."

In 1903, the Fire Department decided that the cost of sending a fire fighter to the tower three times a day was wasteful.  On December 2, The Evening World began an article saying, "The famous old bell tower in Mount Morris Park may not toll again.  For half a century it has sounded alarms of fire and it has tolled the death of famous men and women.  Never once has it failed in its purpose."

But now, said the article, the Fire Department had told the Park Department "that the bell is too expensive" and "has passed its day of usefulness."  The locals, however, had a say on the matter.  The article said, "The people of Mount Morris Park don't want to lose the old bell.  They want it perpetuated and kept standing as a ringing memory of old times."  And they voiced their opinions strongly at a meeting of the Board of Aldermen on December 4, 1903.  

The clapboarding was intact as late as 1908.  The Scrap Book, November 1908 (copyright expired)

Five years later, The Scrap Book recounted, "A storm of protest went up, however, from persons living in the neighborhood, and from lovers of the picturesque and historic in New York City, and it is probable that the old tower will be repaired and preserved for future generations."

The clapboarding had been removed by the Great Depression.  image by the Historic American Engineering Record from the collection of the Library of Congress.

And, indeed, it was.  During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration funded a restoration of the tower and its surroundings.  A plaza was created with walls and broad steps.  

The new plaza was called by locals "The Acropolis."    image by the Historic American Engineering Record from the collection of the Library of Congress.

The second half of the 20th century was unkind.  Although it was designated an individual New York City landmark in 1976, the tower was neglected.  Without proper maintenance, it suffered severe rusting, the loss of treads and the decay of the original copper roof.  Dilapidation made the structure unsafe and a security fence was erected around it.

photograph by Jim Henderson

Then a grass roots effort in 2013 raised $4 million for restoration.  The project, begun the following year, necessitated disassembling the 160-year-old Bogardus-Kroehl structure.  Missing items were refabricated, and each element restored.  The reassembled tower was reopened in December 2019.

The Glorious Loew's 175th Street Theater -- 4140 Broadway

photograph by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

In 1939 Thomas Lamb was far from his birthplace in Dundee, Scotland, on many levels.  In 1883 he arrived in New York at the age of 12 and went on to study architecture at the Cooper Union.  Eventually, after working as a buildings inspector for the City, he established his architectural office, Thomas W. Lamb Inc.

Lamb would make his name with the advent of motion pictures.  His first commission for a theater came in 1909 from motion picture magnate William Fox.  Within eight years he had designed three more motion picture theaters on Times Square.

By the 1920s movie theaters were rightfully deemed “palaces.”  And among the foremost architects of these lavish structures was Lamb.  Before his death in 1942 he would have designed more than 170 theaters.

When the Great Depression hit, Hollywood responded by cranking out carefree musicals and comedies with elaborate sets and lavish costumes.  Busby Berkeley’s Gold Digger series, for instance, offered depression-weary audiences an escape from the gloomy world outside the theater doors.  Even the lyrics in one of the Gold Digger songs, “We’re in the Money,” pretended the financial crisis was over with lines like:

“Old man Depression, you are through. / You’ve done us wrong.”

 and

“We never see a headline about a breadline today.  / And when we see the landlord, we can look that guy right in the eye.”

In 1929 Thomas Lamb would assist in diverting movie-goers’ minds from their troubles.  That year his Loew’s 175^th Street theater was built at No. 4140 Broadway, between West 175^th and 176^th Streets.  Nothing the architect had designed before could outdo this latest extravaganza.

photograph by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

As if with gleeful abandon, Lamb’s wildly exotic design drew from nearly a dozen architectural styles.  Although The New York Times, on February 21, 1930, said “The house’s style of architecture is Indo-Chinese;” it went far beyond even that broad description.  The terra cotta façade—which smacked of a Cambodian or Thai temple--included elephants and Buddhas; and inside Moorish and Byzantine elements coexisted with stylized Rococo and splashes of Art Deco.

photograph by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

As he did most often, Lamb used Harold Rambusch, of the Rambusch Decorating Company to lavish the interiors.  Rambusch and Lamb shared an important theory about motion picture theater design—the audience should be drawn into grander and grander spaces.

In writing about the rehabilitation of vintage theaters, Janis Barlow of Janis A. Barlow Associates quoted Lamb who, in 1929, said “To make our audience receptive and interested, we must cut them off from the rest of the city life and take them into a rich and self-contained auditorium, where their minds are freed from their usual occupations and customary thoughts…it does not seem wise to bring the people directly into the full richness and intensity of the decorative scheme, so it is customary to work up to this intensity through various stages.”

On February 22, 1930 the theater opened with tremendous fanfare.  More than 1,000 Boy Scouts marched up Broadway from 170^th Street to the theater.  “The parade represented the march of Washington’s army to defend New York against the Hessians,” reported The New York Times the following day.  Once in place, the assembled scouts watched the hoisting of the American flag on the roof of the theater.

Movie goers that day would see the screening of Norma Shearer in Their Own Desire.   The interior decorations, however, very well may have been the real show.  As the patrons entered the lobby they were surrounded by gold ornamentation, and red carpeting and hangings.  Intricate carvings encrusted the walls and ceiling.  The newel post lamps of the grand staircase were upheld by elephants.  At the top of the staircase was a gigantic mural featuring a bas relief Art Deco goddess.

Depression-weary movie goers escaped into an exotic fantasy -- photo https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/return-film-to-the-united-palace 

And, as Lamb and Rambusch intended, if the audience was awed by the lobby, they were blown away by the cavernous, richly decorated 3,400-seat auditorium.  Behind the pierced wall carvings were changing colored lights that created a magical kaleidoscope of changing hues.  Once they settled into their red plush seats, the cares of the Great Depression outside were temporarily forgotten.

Behind the filigree walls, lights constantly changed colors creating a mesmerizing effect -- photo by Tammy Lo

As with all the great movie palaces of the time, audiences were treated to organ music prior to the screening.  The size of a theater’s pipe organ was a source of pride as well as a marketing tool for competing motion picture companies.  The Loew’s 175^th Street Theatre boasted a Robert Morton twin-chambered “Wonder Organ.”

On Labor Day, 1943 Local Union 802 filed for a $12 weekly wage increase for movie theater organists.  Nearly a year later, on August 19, 1944, the War Labor Board approved the increase.  “The new scale of $92 per week affects only one musician at present, Henrietta Cameron employed at Loew’s 175^th Street Theater,” reported Billboard on August 26.  Henrietta received a windfall along with the increase.  “Miss Cameron has collected over $550 in retroactive pay from Loew’s,” the periodical said.  The organist was now earning a gross weekly salary of about $1,150 in today's dollars.

For another decade, before television kept families at home instead of at the movies, Loew’s 175^th Street Theater screened first run motion pictures, Saturday serials, and newsreels.  Fans left the auditorium teary-eyed after watching Judy Garland in A Star is Born, smiled through Five Little Peppers at Home, thrilled at Son of Monte Cristo. 

 

photograph by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

As movie audiences thinned, Loew’s got creative.  In 1964 it screened live sports events such as the Liston-Clay heavyweight championship bout on in February; and the New York Giants and Redskins game at Yankee Stadium on September 25^th.  On September 26th The New York Times reported “Pete Rozelle, the commissioner of the National Football League, watched the first quarter of the contest from a seat at the rear of the orchestra of Loew’s 175^th Street theater, at Broadway.”

Tickets did not come cheaply.  The $6 cost to see the close-circuit coverage at Loew’s was the same price as the most expensive seat at Yankee Stadium (about $45 today).

Creativity did not save the majestic theater as a movie house.  In 1969, after the last screening of 2001, a Space Odyssey, the theater was closed.  It was quickly purchased by the Reverend Ike, considered to be the first black televangelist.  No store-front church, his United Palace had the funds to maintain the structure in its full glory.  Rather than alter the interiors Rev. Ike commissioned full-scale renovations that brought back the priceless Rambusch interiors.

In the early 2000s the church offered the auditorium as leased space.   Here audiences saw concerts by artists like Bob Dylan, Adele, the Allman Brothers, Neil Young and others.

Then, in June 2012, the United Palace of Cultural Arts—a nonprofit arts and cultural center—was created at the Palace.  The center hosts community arts programs, provides a venue for local artists to create and exhibit their work, and hosts events like the master workshop for elementary school students by the New York Philharmonic.

The church added the somewhat regrettable belfry; but was otherwise unusually sympathetic in the building's care -- photograph by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

Thomas Lamb’s extraordinary motion picture palace miraculously survives—one of America’s relatively few intact gems from the golden age of theater design.

The 1902 Speyer School -- Nos. 512-516 W. 126th Street

James Joseph Speyer had worked in the Frankfort, Paris and London branches of his family's bank before returning to New York City in 1885 to join Speyer & Co.  Although he sat on the boards of several other banks and trust companies; his interests went far beyond banking. 

He was one of the founders of the Provident Loan Society following the Financial Panic of 1893.  The organization was established to aid the poor who were being taken advantage of by unscrupulous pawn dealers.  The same year that the Provident Loan Society was incorporated, in 1894, he was actively involved in the overthrow of Tammany Hall.

When Speyer married the young widow Ellin Lowery in 1897 he was already a trustee of the Teachers’ College of Columbia University.  At the time settlement houses were cropping up in impoverished neighborhoods, a result of the rampant social reform movement.  In these facilities struggling women learned skills like sewing and housekeeping; and children were provided with practical instruction as well as a clean, safe environment for play.

Speyer was not merely interested in the concept.  The New York Times noted in 1901 that “He is prominently connected with the University Settlement Society.”  On June 11 that year the newspaper announced that Ellin and James J. Speyer had donated $100,000 to Teachers’ College for “a building for an experimental school, equipped with the latest appliances.”  The significant donation, more than $2.5 million today, would be spent in the gritty neighborhood of Lawrence Street (later renamed 126^th Street) near Amsterdam Avenue.

The New-York Tribune reported on the same day, “The purpose of the givers is to provide a model public school.  The building will have five stories and a basement.  In the basement are to be a large gymnasium, baths, toilet rooms, janitors’ quarters and heating and ventilating plants.  The first story will contain an office for the principal of the school, a children’s reading room, a library a kindergarten room and classroom.  On the second and third floors are to be eight classrooms, each with desks for thirty children, and four recitation rooms.  The fourth floor will provide rooms for manual training, sewing and cooking, a dining room and two recitation rooms.”

The roof would provide outdoor space for a garden—not the expected roof garden of chairs and potted plants, though.  Instead it would be a true garden plot “in which children will be instructed in the care of plants and flowers.”

The fifth floor was reserved for staff “with a parlor, dining room, kitchen, six bedrooms and three private studies.”  Because the Speyer School would not be just for children, trained settlement house workers would live in the Speyer School.  That arrangement allowed the building to be open year round in the days and evenings for the use of the community.

Evening classes were provided for adults and the gymnasium and library were open to the public when not required for normal classes.  To assist the impoverished residents of the area to better themselves, “the facilities in manual training, domestic art and domestic science will be at the disposal of extra school classes when not otherwise in use,” reported the Tribune.  Because turn-of-the-century tenements had little or no bathing facilities, the baths were made available to the public as well when the children were not using them.

Boys and girls from the tenement districts had little hope for a bright future in 1901.  Social reformers aspired to change this.  “The Speyer School will be an experiment station,” said the New-York Tribune.  The newspaper explained that the school’s goal was to improve on the best that was offered by social settlements.

“A critical period in the life of most boys and girls is the years between fourteen and twenty.  It is the time when the support and guidance of the school are replaced by the necessity of earning a livelihood.”  The school, therefore, would focus on the occupations each child was interested in and provide addition studies on those fields.

On August 9, 1901, a month after the title to the plot of land at 94 Lawrence Street was obtained, architect Edgar A. Josselyn filed plans for the Speyer School.  The estimated cost of the structure was put at $70,000.

Josselyn would produce a five-story German Renaissance structure of buff brick and terra cotta.  Minimal ornamentation on the lower floors would be compensated for by a two-story stepped gable with swirling console brackets and exuberant carving.  A thin opening above the paired attic windows gave the impression of an additional floor.

Construction took over a year and the dedication exercises were held on April 23, 1903.  In his speech, Dean Russell stressed that the school was intended “to elevate the community in which it was planted.”  James Speyer spoke as well, diminishing his role in the process.  According to Manual Training Magazine, “The building, he said, is but a small thing.  It is the work of the teacher which tells.  Citizens must be intelligent as well as law-abiding.  In peace and in war, and in the solution of industrial questions, American schools will show their influence.”

The school shortly after completion -- http://www.tc.columbia.edu/news.htm?articleID=7495&pub=7&issue=256

The school was an immediate success, prompting the New-York Tribune to remark the following day “Already the building is taxed to its utmost capacity, and is the home of numerous boys’ and girls’ clubs.”

The roof was soon used for far more than merely the instructional flower and vegetable garden.  On May 30, 1906 the New-York Tribune reported “On the roof of the school is the playground, in the corner of which a model bedroom, with plenty of light and air, has been built by the children in the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades.”

To help pay for additional equipment the Speyer School staged a sale of the students’ manual work.  The students themselves were responsible for the operation of the sales.  In December 1907, for instance, the 8^th grade was in charge of finance and the 7^th grade was responsible for “management of sale.”  There were seven special committees like the “examining committee” (“if carelessly made or unsuitably constructed, the examiners will reject articles and return them to the grade which was responsible.").  The “committee on arrangements” found suitable rooms, ensured they were properly cleaned and heated and provided suitable furniture, cash boxes, etc.  Although girls in the sixth through eighth grades supplied some baked goods, there was a special committee on “Candy and Cake.”  Its job was to “endeavor to secure the co-operation of adult friends of Speyer School, who may be willing to make candies for our sale.”

The School Journal noted that the year before the proceeds from that sale went for gymnastic apparatus for the roof playground.  This year the fifth graders had made address booklets for sale.  Frances Van Camp described them.  “First we covered the outside with Japanese paper.  Then cut twenty-seven papers for the inside and marked them.  We printed addresses inside and tied a silk cord with a pencil on the end.”

The sixth grade made needle-books, lamp shapes, baskets and mounted pictures; the seventh and eighth grades fashioned sofa cushions, clipping cases, teapot stands, and decorated fans.

When the sale closed the children had netted $82.92 to be spend on school equipment.  But far more importantly they had learned practical lessons in organization, retail practices, marketing and other business principals.

The focus of the school began to change in 1915.  On February1 that year the New-York Tribune noted “A class for exceptional children will be opened at the Speyer School, a part of Teachers College, February 8.  The judgment of fond parents, however, will not be the sole qualification.  Dr. Louis E. Bisch, a specialist in the treatment of atypical children, and Dr. Naomi Norsworthy, associate professor of educational psychology, will examine and classify the children.”

By “exceptional” and “atypical” the school did not necessarily mean gifted.  Included were those “suffering all the disadvantages of the child mentally below normal,” as described by The Sun eight months later.  Dr. Bisch had implemented an experimental program to study and teach the learning challenged.  His students came not from the underprivileged neighborhood, but from the sitting rooms of Manhattan’s elite.

“In appearance most of the children are normal,” said The Sun on October 24.  “All of them are sons and daughters of well to do parents.  Some of them go to school in automobiles.  All of them have nurses or other attendants to look after them on their trips between home and classes.”  But, said the newspaper, “Each child is a special study in feeblemindedness.”

At the time slow learning and physically disabled children were essentially overlooked by the educational system.  The Speyer School was ground-breaking in this regard.

“All the children in the Speyer School are below normal.  One of them can read, one can write a little.  The senses of one little girl are acute, and she recognizes sounds or colors readily, though letters or numbers are too abstract for her grasp.  Another little girl easily catches the words of a song, but during singing becomes confused and forgets them.”

Not “all the children” in the school were challenged, as The Sun said.  The school looked to the other end of the intelligence spectrum as well.  In February 1916, 200 boys who had completed the 6^th grade were selected for another experimental program.  Based on their keen learning abilities, they were put into a “rapid advance” program.  “They are divided into groups, and shifted about on the basis of individual progress,” reported The Evening World on February 2.  “The boys with whom the experiment succeeds will be able, at the end of two years, to enter the second year of the city high schools, thus gaining one school year.”

At the same time the top floor had been converted for use as the Friendly Home for Girls.  The “home” trained 36 orphaned girls “in all branches of domestic science,” explained The New York Times on January 7, 1917.  The newspaper said that The Friendly Home “marks a departure in the treatment of orphans.”

Supervised by Mrs. Julius J. Frank, Chairman of the Ladies’ Serving Society of the orphan institution, the Home prepared young girls to obtain jobs.  “According to Mrs. Frank many girls already have been placed in households—not as servants, but as ‘mothers’ assistants.’”

As changes in theories of education continued, the Speyer School adapted.  In 1935 a new “experimental school” was established as a joint venture of Teachers College and the Board of Education.  On September 8, 1935 The New York Times described it as an “effort to discover and develop new methods for dealing with both the dull-normal and the bright pupil.”

The school was rechristened PO 500 and the program’s formal title was “The Public School Experiment with Mental Deviates.”  The “deviates” were selected by means of intelligence tests.  “Slow” learners were defined as children with IQ’s of 75 to 90; “rapid” learners had IQ’s of 130 to 200.

From its inception the experiment was to last only until each student’s thirteenth birthday or until February 1941.  After that, the school building was shuttered and, for the first time in four decades, sat unused.  On April 11, 1942 The New York Times reported that among the buildings a group looked at as a possible addition to the City College School of Business was “the abandoned Speyer School at Amsterdam Avenue and 126^th Street.”

Finally in May 1946 Columbia University announced that “Speyer School will be altered to allow quarters for 125 single students.”  It was part of the emergency housing project approved by Governor Dewey to provide housing for returning veterans attending college.  But later that year, in October, Teachers College donated the building to the two-year old Manhattanville Neighborhood Center.

A year and a half renovation costing $160,000 was completed in March 1948.  A dedication ceremony on March 21 drew 250 attendees.  The Rev. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, in his comments, emphasized that the “center wants to go beyond the remedial needs of the neighborhood.”

From 1964 through 1977 the building was owned by the Episcopal Diocese of New York.  During the turbulent civil rights movement era it was the scene of several programs focused on civil rights.  Here one of the first Head Start programs was based and a week before his assassination Dr. Martin Luther King visited the building.

Finances were a problem and in 1977 the Diocese gave the building to the Paul Robeson Community Center; but that group, too, was unable to support it financially.

The former Speyer School, always a center of social outreach and neighborhood improvement, would continue its changing role in 1991.  Across the street sat St. Mary’s EpiscopalChurch which, throughout the 20^th century, had been active in social and community causes.  By now the Speyer School building had been abandoned and neglected for years and St. Mary’s purchased it in a joint venture with the Episcopal Mission Society.

After renovations, it opened as the St. Mary’s Center for persons with HIV/AIDS.  Today the facility continues to house and provide its clients with medical, social and psychosocial support. 

More than a century after its construction, the surprising German Renaissance structure continues its intended purpose of providing support and outreach to the Harlem community; just as James and Ellin Speyer intended.

photographs taken by the author

The 1908 St. Mary's Episcopal Church -- 521 West 126th Street

The Commissioners’ Plan of Manhattan’s that resulted in streets and avenues was published in 1811.  Within the next two decades the country estates closest to the city would be criss-crossed with thoroughfares and, in most cases, their elegant villas demolished.  But farther north the rural summer estates of the city’s wealthiest citizens would survive significantly longer.

The Bloomingdale Road, later renamed Broadway, was the major artery for travelers.  Dotted along it, roadhouses provided travelers rest and refreshment; while lanes and unpaved roads branched off toward the summer estates.  Around the convergence of the Bloomingdale Road and Manhattan Street (approximately 125^th Street today), a tiny village was laid out in 1806 by city surveyor Adolphus Loss. 

Called Manhattanville, it soon had a school and “house of entertainment," a market and a wharf.  The rural village attracted tenant farmers and blue collar workers.  A stage and a boat provided transportation for the eight mile trip to New York and before long a ferry to New Jersey was established.

By 1823 there were about 15 homes in the village for its mostly poor residents.  Although small, the population, augmented by the wealthy summertime residents, was large enough to warrant a house of worship.  On Thanksgiving Day, December 18, 1823 Rev. William Richmond, the rector of St. Michael’s Church in the village of Bloomingdale held a worship service in the school house.  He took the opportunity to invite residents to organize a proper church.

Although nearly all of the churches established in Manhattan's the rural north at the time were chapels of convenience—branches of established churches downtown—Richmond proposed an independent church and parish.  Wealthy merchant Jacob Schieffelin donated a plot of land 60 by 100 feet on Lawrence Street for the new St. Mary’s Protestant Episcopal Church.  The cornerstone was laid on June 15, 1824 and the little wooden structure was dedicated on October 23, 1826.

Included in the original membership rolls were prestigious names like Schieffelin, Lorrillard, Jay, de Peyster, Stuyvesant, and Lawrence.  Another was Elizabeth Hamilton, the widow of Alexander Hamilton, and her two sons.  The Hamilton mansion, The Grange, sat nearby.  Other Manhattanville residents had a harder time gaining membership.  The Minutes of the Vestry dated December 27, 1823 limited membership to “white male persons of full age, who shall for one year last, preceding the election, have worshipped according to the rites of the Protestant Episcopal Church and shall have contributed the sum of not less than fifty cents.”

Five years after its doors were opened St. Mary’s Church eliminated pew rent.  What sounds like a forward-thinking and generous move was probably simply pragmatic.  Although there were wealthy members; the majority of parishioners were poor and the pew rents were meager.  Trustees finally decided to simply forgo the rents altogether.

As the city crept northward the villages in what would eventually be clumped together as Harlem thrived.  St. Mary’s Church focused on the betterment of the Manhattanville residents.  Trustees established the Free School of St. Mary’s Church which was “open equally to all denominations;” and in 1864 opened “The Sheltering Arms.”  The New York Times described The Sheltering Arms as “a charitable institution…to give a home to children, not orphans, but who from one reason or another have been deprived of the comforts of a home.” 

By the beginning of the 20^th century Manhattanville was fully developed.  The little wooden church on Lawrence Street was no longer adequate for the growing congregation.  Although rector, the Rev. Hiram R. Hulse, pushed for a new building in the late 1890s, the project was delayed by a lack of funds. 

Then on February 2, 1908 the New-York Tribune announced that the old building would be razed and a new church erected on the site.  The newspaper said it “will be of brick, with trimmings of limestone, of Gothic design, with a large decorative tracery window and a peaked roof, with an ornamental gablet.” 

One month later, on March 8, The New York Times remarked “To-day marks the passing of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, in Lawrence Street, near 129^th Street, east of Broadway, which will, however live again in a handsome new brick and stone edifice to be erected on the old site.”

The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide was a bit wistful to see the venerable structure go.  Below the headline “Another Landmark to Disappear,” it reported on March 21, 1908 “The awarding of the contract to the Amsterdam Building Co, 43 West 27^th st., to erect the new edifice in Lawrence st…means the disappearance of an old landmark in Harlem.  The present frame structure was built in 1823 and is one of the oldest in the city.”

The periodical credited the design to “Architects Carrere & Hastings” and predicted it would be “an attractive structure of stone and brick.”  The writer failed to name firm member Theodore E. Blake who was mainly responsible for the design.

The charming structure was completed before the end of the year.  Blake and his associates had produced a picturesque country church for what was now a bustling community.  The New-York Tribune reflected on the change in the neighborhood saying “The new St. Mary’s replaced a wooden structure constructed in 1828, when Manhattanville was a scattered village of country homes and villas on Bloomingdale Road, far to the north of the city of New York.  To-day the city has not only grown up to it, but miles beyond.”

Built of red brick with stone detailing, its English Gothic design bore some striking similarities to Renwick & Sands’ 1868 Church of the Holy Sepulcher on East 74^th Street.  Blake’s structure, however, was dominated by the enormous Gothic arched window with its graceful tracery.  Atop the gable sat a quaint open bell tower crowned by a Celtic cross.  The bell from the original St. Mary’s hung in the tower.  The side porch of the church was carefully erected over the burial vault of the Jacob Schieffelin family.

Inside the architects carried out the rural ambiance with exposed beams and fretwork and unplastered brick walls.  And yet the proportions of the space resulted in a melding of the charm with grandeur.  The $35,000 cost would translate to about $856,000 today.

Blake forwent frescoes and lavish decoration for quiet charm.  photograph taken around 1910 by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York, http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWPC5GPF&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

The consecration of the new St. Mary’s was held on New Year’s Day 1909.  A long list of clergymen assisted in the service which was celebrated by Bishop David H. Greer.  The New-York Tribune reported that the congregation “crowded the structure.”

St. Mary’s Protestant Episcopal Church drew its choir partly from The Sheltering Arms.  In 1912 the voices of twelve men and eight women were augmented by those of a dozen boys from that organization.  Choirmaster T. B. Arden was secure in his choir’s supply of young voices—it was the grown-ups that were making him nervous.  They were rampantly pairing off and getting married, threatening the continued existence of his group.

On September 16, 1912 The Sun reported that Arden “is afraid that if Cupid doesn’t leave his choir alone his church will be without music…He lost two men and two young women through marriages last week, and it is known that very soon three more engagements will be announced.”

The newspaper told readers that choir members Helen Belle and Frank Roe had been married in the church on the past Monday; and two days later soproano Mabel Quigley gave a party at her home to the choir members.  “Under the ice cream plates were found cards announcing that she had been married to William C. Blockwood.”  It was almost too much for the choirmaster to handle.

“The impending engagements, Mr. Arden thinks, will break up the choir if those concerned leave it when they marry.”

 

The 1908 side windows hint at the Art Nouveau movement.

Six years after Prohibition was enacted, a strong push for repeal swept the nation.  Many of those who believed that the outlawing of alcohol would reduce taxes and better the quality of life now recognized that there was a downside.  Organized crime was rampant; hundreds of millions of federal tax revenue was lost; while millions were being spent on Prohibition enforcement.

Charles Breck Ackley, pastor of St. Mary’s, however, was unmoved.  On November 1, 1926 he stood before his congregation and addressed the growing pressure for repeal.  He argued that six years was not long enough for Prohibition to prove itself.

“A great moral and ethical question is before the American people, and especially the people of this State.  My contention is not that prohibition has as yet been proved to be the final answer, but we are in the midst of a great experiment in human betterment.  We have not had time to really try it out, even if we had whole-hearted enforcement and cooperation by our citizens.  We should be good sportsmen enough to really try the experiment, to carry it through.”

 

The once-rural neighborhood was much changed by 1932.  Behind the garden sits the 1851 parish house, another reminder of gentler times.  photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library

Ackley was not the first and certainly not the last rector of St. Mary’s unafraid to voice his opinion.  One of the most outspoken would be the Rev. Robert W. Castle, Jr. who took the pulpit in 1987.  By now Lawrence Street had become West 126^th Street and the congregation was largely black and Hispanic.

Father Castle’s ministry was as much about social outreach as spiritual preaching.  He had marched alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and picketed businesses that refused to hire minorities.  Among his first actions as rector was to bring in a Spanish-speaking priest so neighbors could hear mass in their language.  When the nearby Cathedral of St. John the Divine held a service honoring General Colin L. Powell and other Operation Desert Storm participants, Castle was out front with the protesters.

The fiery and determined actions of the priest resulted in the 1992 documentary film “Cousin Bobby,” in which Castle played himself.  His convincing performance led to other roles, including the father of Tom Hanks’ character, Andrew Beckett, dying from AIDS in the 1993 film “Philadelphia.”

 

A 2014 occasion prompted streamers in the timbered sanctuary.

Father Robert Castle retired in 2000 but his legacy continues on West 126^th Street.  Under his direction the St. Mary’s Episcopal Center was established across the street from the church; a residence and day treatment center for people living with HIV/AIDS.  The church continues to reach out to the homeless and needy and runs a “supermarket style” Food Pantry and a mobile soup kitchen.

Theodore Blake’s 1908 brick and stone jewel is virtually unchanged and meticulously maintained.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

The 1897 2nd Reformed Presbyterian Church -- 308 W. 122nd Street

In 1877 the Rev. Dr. Andrew Stevenson, pastor of the Second Reformed Presbyterian Church noted in The Reformed Presbyterian and Covenanter, “The Reformed Presbyterian Church in the city of New York had its origin in a praying society of two families who became acquainted in 1790.”  Eight years later the group received its first “Lord’s supper.”  The congregation had increased to 20 members, “six of these were from a distance.”

The number of Reformed Presbyterians, most driven from Ireland and Scotland by persecution, continued to grow and by the last decades of the 19^th century there were three congregations.  It was not merely the number of worshipers that resulted in the three separate churches—the Presbyterians were racked with dissention and turmoil among themselves. 

In the spring of 1847, after the Second Reformed Presbyterian Church broke away, the Synod issued a judgment which deemed the congregation “immoral” and read in part “Resolved, That the Second congregation, New York [is] hereby directed to alter the tenure of their property and the mode of managing all such temporalities, so as to free themselves from all connection with said immoral law.”

The judgment created a crisis and only a year later a schism developed within the Second Reformed congregation.  Of its 334 members 182 walked away to form the Third Congregation.  Of those who remained, 104 were women and, according to Stevenson, “This division almost destroyed our existence.”

The church persevered and in 1896 was ready to build a new structure.  The neighborhood of West 39^th Street near Sixth Avenue had changed in the two decades that Second Reformed had worshiped here.  The neighborhood was increasingly commercial; pushing congregants out.  The quickly-developing area of Harlem far to the north offered an attractive alternative.

Three elevated train lines served Harlem and the streets were lined with fine brownstone and brick rowhouses, shaded by trees.  In 1897 the streetscape would be improved with an addition when the new Second Reformed Presbyterian Church at 308 West 122^nd Street was completed.

The congregation had hired architect James W. Cole to design the building.  In the ten years he had been in business Cole had busied himself mostly with commercial and apartment buildings.  Now he tried his hand at an ecclesiastical work with charming results. 

Cole created a simple Gothic-inspired church.  Its proportions belie the actual size; suggesting a one-story country chapel rather than the rather substantial building that rises as high as a five-story tenement.  Perhaps to save costs, Cole used terra cotta for the contrasting details—the trim of the arches and oculus, and the buttress caps, for instance—rather than expected limestone or granite.  A wonderful brick corbelling drips down from the gable in three lengths, creating a gingerbread-frosting effect.

The old animosities of the Reformed Presbyterians were eventually put to rest.  The Second Reformed congregation continued to prosper.  Its choice of location for the new structure proved to be a wise one as public transportation from downtown to Harlem increased.  On August 22, 1914 Christian Nation made note of the church’s convenient location:

Members of New York Presbytery please notice that the spring meeting is to be held in the Second Church of New York City, at 308 West 122^nd street, at 8 p.m. Tuesday, May 5^th.  The Eighth avenue surface cars or the elevated trains stopping at 125^th street bring you near to the church.  This is not an official notice, only an indication of the way to those not knowing it.

In the meantime, the year after the Second Reformed Church opened the doors to its new building, 23-year-old Methodist preacher William Edward Fuller, Sr. had an epiphany.  The Southern minister walked out into a corn field near his home to pray in solitude and there he received what he later deemed the “Baptism of the Holy Ghost and Fire.”  The term was a reference to John’s gospel account that “he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.”

Fuller had been a member of the African-American New Hope Methodist Church which, despite the name, admitted black and white members without partiality.   Now he resigned his post and turned to the Fire-Baptized Holiness.  The new church was based along the lines of the Episcopal church with bishops holding the highest offices.  Starting with two members the congregation had ballooned to more than a thousand by 1908.

That year Fuller separated the racial content of the church, leading about half of the congregants to organize the Colored Fire Baptized Holiness Church in Greer, South Carolina.  On June 8, 1926 the name of both groups was changed for the final time to Fire Baptized Holiness Church of God of the Americas.

The Harlem neighborhood had, by now, changed dramatically.  At the turn of the century Black New Yorkers began moving into the neighborhood, pushed out by rents and discrimination downtown.  The WPA’s New York City Guide explained in 1939 “Negroes began to move into Harlem in 1901 as a result of a deflated boom in real estate there.  Because of the lack of adequate transportation facilities, fine apartments erected by speculative real-estate promoters were left tenantless.  A Negro agent, Philip A. Payton, persuaded landlords to accept Negro tenants, and hundreds of families soon deserted old tenements in the crowded West Fifty-third Street and Sun Juan Hill (west of Columbus Circle) sections and poured into Harlem.”

Even here, however, the blacks were taken advantage of.  The Guide said “Barred from most residential areas in the city, Negroes pay rents 50 per cent higher than those charged for comparable living quarters elsewhere.”  In 1917 Bishop William Edward Fuller had established a mission in Harlem and a year later the Mount Olive Fire Baptized Holiness Church was formed at No. 6 West 126^th Street.

The immediate area around Second Reformed Presbyterian remained did not change as quickly as other parts of Harlem.  When the WPA wrote its guide, it noted “Although Negroes live along the streets north and south of it, West 125^th Street is not predominantly a Negro center; white residents of Morningside Heights and Manhattanville have used it as a shopping center for years.”  The white owners’ refusal to hire black employees resulted in a significant race riot in 1935 “of alarming proportions.”

Four years after the WPA published its New York City Guide, the Second Reformed Presbyterian Church put its building on the market.  It was purchased by the Mount Olive Fire Baptized Holiness Church, which had been worshiping at No. 2395 Eighth Avenue since 1932.  The congregation paid $40,000 for the building in 1943—a substantial $625,000 in today’s dollars.

The neighborhood around James W. Cole’s delightful brick church continues to change 71 years later.  The dark days of the late 20^th century have given way to revitalization of the area.  The Mount Olive congregation continues to worship in the 122^nd Street church.  Apart from the questionable choice of replacement entrance doors, the building which has seen so much change around it is virtually untouched since its completion nearly 120 years ago.

photograph by the author

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