The Church of the Incarnation -- Madison Ave. and 35th Street

During the Rev. Dr. Taylor’s sermon on the day of the consecration of the new Grace Church on March 7, 1846, he said “my object is to ask of you to give me the means of building, and preparing for the most efficient and the most immediate operation, Grace Church Chapel.”   Taylor recognized that Manhattan’s population was already moving past the borders of his parish.

Three plots were purchased on the northwest corner of Madison Avenue and 28th Street and a "neat and tasteful building erected thereon."  More than half a century later, in 1912, historian Joshua Newton Perkins noted “The site selected for the chapel was in a sparsely settled district, a short distance north of Madison Square…In 1852 the chief house in that locality was the little white cottage of Corporal Thompson at the corner of Broadway and Twenty-third Street.”  The New York Times commented that the chapel was “intended for the many poor of the congregation who could not afford to pay pew-rent.”

On April 19, 1852 the mission committee met for the purpose of forming a new parish—separating from Grace Church.  The result was the Church of the Incarnation.  Rev. Huntington later asked the Rev. Edwin Harwood how he chose the name.  “He said he gave it the name, as the parish had started from Grace Church, ‘for by grace came the Incarnation.’”

The “neat and tasteful building” was soon a problem. John Jay at a vestry meeting on November 8, 1855, noted “the very defective construction of the church edifice.” Three years later, on May 31, 1858 the New York Churchman wrote “The Church of the Incarnation was built some five years since, as a Chapel of Ease of Grace Church in this city.  The appearance of the structure would suggest great age, and the contrast is the more glaring from the comparison with the substantial edifices in its vicinity. It must have been originally very imperfectly put together, and demands reparation, if only from the consideration that it is God’s House-‘the place where His Honour dwelleth.’”

The property was sold back to Grace Church and in June 1863 the rector announced that $50,000 had been subscribed to the building fund and that amount would be spent on the northeast corner of Madison Avenue and 35^th Street.  (As it turned out, the property was acquired for $48,000.)

Joshua Perkins related “Three designs for the building had been under consideration, submitted respectively by Messrs. Gambrel and Post, Mr. H. G. Harrison and Mr. E. T. Little.  The vestry decided upon the plan of Mr. Little, and he was accordingly appointed architect of the church.”

Emlen T Little was born in Philadelphia and focused almost exclusively on ecclesiastical design.  Like Richard Upjohn, he preferred Gothic Revival for his church architecture. And so it would be for the Church of the Incarnation.  His instructions, according to Perkins, were “that the church should be without galleries, should seat eleven hundred and six people, that the organ be placed near the chancel and that the entire cost should not exceed the original estimate.”

The cornerstone for the new building was laid on March 8, 1864 by the powerful Bishop Horatio Potter.  Despite the upheaval caused by civil war the building continued at a blinding rate. Six months later, on September 26, The New York Times remarked “The new church is of the early decorative Gothic order, and is intended to seat about twelve hundred people, without the side galleries.  It is built of Newark stone, the dressings and weatherings of Cleveland stone; the Chancel of Apisdal, and lighted from above.”

The $8,000 organ by Stambridge had already been installed at this point.  “The wheel of the organ is to be turned by a running stream of water, a new style, and one which it is said will produce a greater evenness of sound.  A peculiar feature of the building will be a beautiful series of memorial windows.  The Church is to have a spire 185 or 190 feet high, and its cost, without the spire, will be about $130,000,” said the newspaper.

The edifice was completed by December and its cost came in a little under The Times’ prediction at $120,000—over $1.8 million today.   The church which was originally intended for the poor who could not afford pew rent now sat squarely among the mansions of some of New York’s wealthiest citizens.

The church as it appeared prior to the fire--only backwards.  The publisher accidentally flipped the negative.  History of the Parish of the Incarnation, 1912 (copyright expired)

Emlen T. Little described his work saying it “is in the Early Decorated English Gothic style, of the first part of the XIVth century, adapted to modern principles and improvements in architecture…The exterior and interior sculptures are modeled after natural leaves; the arch braces of the roof are filled with tracery purlins and intermediates, forming square panels, above which is the chestnut ceiling.  The chamfers have been colored with vermilion and the roof oiled and stained.”

The furnishings were of ash, walnut, and chestnut and the ceiling was decorated in brilliant colors.  “The lower panels filled with plaster tinted to deep ultra-marine, are relieved with constellations of golden stars,” said Little’s notes.  “The upper panels are filled with white glass with ruby border…The walls of te church are encrusted with diaper work in plaster.”

The church was formally opened on December 11, 1864.  The Times reported “Notwithstanding the exceedingly inclement weather, a very large congregation occupied the spacious and beautiful sanctuary.”  The newspaper was taken by the care Little had taken to eliminate outside glare. “The light is so admitted that not a ray falls into the eyes of the people.  At night the church is illuminated by gas-jets around the poles of the columns, and by a superb corona in the chancel.”

The concept of free pews for the poor had fallen by the wayside.  On the Friday following the first service a public sale of pews was held at 7:30 p.m.  The New York Times remarked a few days later “We understand that one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of pews have been sold in the new Church of the Incarnation.”  Additional monetary gifts of $25,000 had been donated and $20,000 in “premiums” had been received.  “The success recorded above is believed to be without a parallel in the history of the Protestant Episcopal Church in this or any other city,” opined the newspaper.

The congregation of the Church of the Incarnation included the names of some of Manhattan’s most respected citizens.  So when vestryman Louis F. Therasson was arrested in November 1877 it was shocking at least.   Reporters were told he was “regarded as a man of means and as an energetic Christian worker, above the faintest breath of suspicion.”

The 57-year old lawyer was, according to The New York Times “of nervous temperament” and “of highly respectable parentage.”  He lived “in good style” at No. 518 Madison Avenue; a style more understandable when it was discovered her had swindled clients out of around $130,000.

The same month that the messy affair was publicized, the church unveiled an 8-foot memorial to the Rev. Dr. H. E. Montgomery who died in 1874.  Designed by architect Henry Hobson Richardson, it incorporated bronze panels by Auguste St. Gaudens.  The Gothic memorial consisted of carved sandstone and marble and cost the donors $1,500.  There was only one other memorial—a white marble tablet to Admiral Farragut—in the church.

Dormers with leaded glass openings provide additional light to the interior.

In 1882 Sexton James P. Tibbitts was concerned that the gas light burners were too near the ceiling.   Workmen were brought in to lower the fixtures to prevent fire.  The cautionary move produced the opposite result.

The gas-fitters finished their work around noon on March 24, 1882.  When Assistant Sexton William Garvin returned to the church after dinner, around 8:15, to prepare for the next day’s service, “he found the building full of smoke, and on passing into the church, saw smoke rolling along the Gothic roof.”

Instead of sending an alarm to the fire department, Garvin ran to the house of Sexton Tibbitts at No. 1284 Broadway.  By the time Tibbitts got to the church the fire had advanced.  “When firemen entered by the chapel door the flames were bursting through the floor of the church behind the chancel and in the passageway leading from the chancel to the chapel,” reported The Times.

After an hour of fighting the fire, it was finally under control.  The Church of the Incarnation was nearly entirely destroyed.  According to a congregant, Mrs. Kellner, when the rector arrived “a neighboring Presbyterian minister could not resist saying to him, ‘You Episcopalians manage your fires with as much decorum as you do everything else.’”

Inside the building highly-expensive items were lost, like the $20,000 organ by Erben which had replaced the original; and the $15,000 memorial window in the west end of the church.  “The roof of the church, with the exception of a small portion toward the front, was destroyed, but the walls of the building and the square tower on the south-west corner of the structure were intact. The chancel was burned out entirely, and the handsome fount and reading-desks were destroyed,” reported The New York Times.

The damage was estimated at $50,000, all of which was covered by insurance.  Rather than demolish the ruins and start over; the congregation opted to repair their beloved structure.  On June 29, 1882 John L. Riker announced plans for the rebuilding of the church.  “The walls are to be taken down and the structure rebuilt as it was before the fire,” reported a newspaper.

Two days later the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide noted that the architects chosen for the project were brothers David and John Jardine.  The church was enlarged “and improved,” and the construction was completed by Christmas.  The cost of rebuilding and outfitting the building was $75,000.  The architects respected Little’s original exterior design; however the “interior presents an entirely new appearance,” according to The New York Times on December 25, 1882.

History of the Parish of the Incarnation, 1912 (copyright expired)

Although the church was reopened in December, it would take years to totally complete the renovations.  In May 1883 the installation of the new organ was completed and a “complimentary concert” was given.

Artist John La Farge was given the commission to create to panel paintings.  As he worked on them in November 1885, the Record and Guide deemed them “the most important work he has yet undertaken in the character of the subject, the artistic aim, and the linear dimensions.”

William Garvin, the sexton who had discovered the fire in 1882, was an Irish immigrant.  A widower, he lived with his two sons and a daughter in Brooklyn.  On the evening of Saturday June 17, 1892 Rev. Dr. Arthur Brooks reminded him to lock up and be back early to open the church for services.  When Sexton Jackson arrived at 10:00 on Sunday morning, he was surprised to find the choir waiting outside and the doors still locked.

“Jackson opened the door with his own keys, and found Garvin lying dead in one of the aisles,” reported The Times.  He had apparently suffered a massive stroke.

By 1895 the interior decorations were essentially finished.  La Farge’s two panels, the Nativity of Christ and the Visit of the Magi, were acclaimed by The Times’ art critic.  “Both are delightful, each in its way, the latter perhaps being richer in color than the former, and having greater depth and fullness of tone.”

The stained glass windows were executed by the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company; two by La Farge; and seven by Henry Holiday in England.

The often-acerbic art critic Helen Henderson would be less glowing when she described the La Farge panels in 1909, calling them “badly set.”  She called his two windows “early examples of no great importance.”

Henderson did not confine her criticisms to La Farge.  “The embellishment of the Church of the Incarnation seems to have been pursued without definite plan, and the result is more curious than pleasing.”  She complained that Holiday’s and La Farge’s styles “were diametrically opposed” and “it is unfortunate for the ensemble that the work of the two artists should be thus juxtaposed.” And she called the two small stained glass windows by William Morris “of little consequence.”

Helen Henderson was nearly alone in her opinions.  The Times considered the Holiday windows “of the highest character” and said that La Farge’s windows “both well represent him.”  The baptismal font was sculpted by Louis St. Gaudens and surmounted by a figure of John the Baptist.  “This work is attractive in many ways, and marks a commendable departure from the inartistic architectural designs of fonts generally seen in other churches,” said the newspaper.

In 1896 the trustees hired architects Heins & La Farge to enlarge the church by moving the rear wall back six feet.   The renovation cost the congregation $5,000.

The neighborhood around the Church of the Incarnation changed in the 20^th century. The mansions of Madison Avenue were replaced by office buildings that towered over the Gothic stone structure.  But the residential side streets of Murray Hill remained upscale and the congregation continued to be well heeled.

A mid-century postcard depicted the impressive church.

Nevertheless, the church adapted to changing times.  Allen Hughes, writing for The New York Times on December 19, 1970, said “Most of the music being presented in Christmas programs in churches this season is traditional, but at the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation tomorrow a more modern sound will be heard.  Richard Felciano’s ‘God of the Expanding Universe’ will be performed, and it is a work for electronic tape and organ.”

A century after the rebuilding of the Church of the Incarnation, its age was posing a danger.  In 1990 chunks of stone began falling off the building, prompting officials to erect scaffolding with mesh netting to protest pedestrians.  The following year a $1 million restoration was initiated.   The reddish tone of the brownstone reappeared after 127 years of city soot was removed.  The roof and the masonry were repaired.

Ornate iron gates protect to portico.

Another restoration was conducted in 2014.  Despite Helen Henderson’s pedantic rant in 1909, the Church of the Incarnation represents a treasure of 19^th century architectural and artistic work.

non-credited photographs by the author

The Century Association Building -- No. 109-111 East 15th Street

photo by Alice Lum

In 1847 when The Century club was founded—taking its name from the 100 invited members—Union Square was developing as a most fashionable residential district.  The park was ringed with fine brick homes and churches which spilled onto the side streets; all except for East 15^th Street where five industrial buildings created a stark exception.

The five buildings were faced by two wooden homes across the street to the north, one being No. 42 East 15^th Street.  That two-and-a-half story house was purchased in 1855 by Isaac Lewis, a builder.  Before long the house and the block would change dramatically.

In 1857 The Century club become incorporated as the Century Association; a social organization for authors, artists and dabblers in the fine arts.  The Sun would praise the club as having “a purpose to serve,” unlike those which had for their “principal end the affording to young men of conveniences for idle amusement.”  Instead, the proper Victorian gentlemen set as their goal “plain living and high thinking.”

The club bounced from location to location until that year when it increased its membership to 250.  With a permanent clubhouse now deemed a necessity, the Century purchased No. 42 from Lewis for $24,000.

Club member and architect Joseph C. Wells set about to renovate the wooden house into a proper clubhouse.  The $11,000 renovations resulted in a Cinderella-like transformation.  The frame house became an Italian palazzo with a balustraded staircase and pedimented windows.

Throughout the Civil War years the club continued to grow and expand its activities.  The clubhouse, by 1866, was no longer adequate for its functions and meetings.  A committee was formed to decide whether to move or reconstruct the building again. 

It was a time of financial uncertainty for exclusive men’s clubs.   The eminent Union Club was reported to be “deep in debt” by The Sun and The New York Club had heavily borrowed to keep afloat.   Before long both the Athenaeum and the Eclectic clubs would close due to financial hardship.

Considering its finances, the Century opted to renovate.   The partners in the architectural firm of Gambrill & Post, Charles D. Gambrill and George B. Post, were both club members.  In May of the following year Gambrill submitted his proposal renovations.

For some unexplained reason, part of Gambrill’s design—an extension to the rear of the clubhouse—was quickly completed; but the interior alterations and the new façade sat on the drafting table.  The new extension provided for a billiard room on the main floor and an art gallery above.

During the two years while the plans collected dust, Post left the architectural firm and Gambrill took on Henry Hobson Richardson who, like Post, would go on to be ranked among America’s preeminent 19^th century architects.

Finally in 1869 construction began under plans by Gambrill & Richardson.  The amount of input Richardson had in the final designs is undocumented; but whichever architect was responsible, the result was noteworthy.

Gone was the Italian palazzo with its stone balustraded fences and Renaissance-styled windows.  In its place appeared a brick and stone neo-Grec structure with a formal countenance that reflected the propriety of the club members.  The third floor attic was raised to form a full-floor mansard.  Stone courses doubled as structural support and horizontal design elements.  The completed renovations cost $21,000—nearly the full price the club paid for the building originally.

Iron cresting originally lined the slate, fish-scale tiled mansard roof. -- photo by Alice Lum

The renovated clubhouse was deemed by The Sun “a handsome and commodious house…where its members believed it had found a permanent place of abode.”

The Century Association would see America’s brightest literary and artistic figures sign their membership rolls throughout the years.  The unending list included actor Edwin Booth, artists Albert Bierstadt, Frederick Church, Charles C. Tiffany and Augustus Saint Gaudens.  Politicians like Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt and Hamilton Fish were members, as were William Cullen Bryant, all three members of the architectural firm McKim, Mead and White; and millionaires John Jacob Astor, Jr., Cornelius Vanderbilt and J. Pierpont Morgan.

By 1887 when the guidebook “How to Know New York City” called the Century Association "a literary, artistic, and aesthetic club, with…a large library, and a picture-gallery,” membership had grown to 600. 

That same year sculptor Auguste Bartholdi arrived in New York to help raise money for the pedestal of his “Liberty Enlightening the World.”  The colossal statue had been presented to the United States as a gift from the people of France; however it might well have included a tag “base not included.”  Bartholdi understandably chose the Century Association building for his January 2, 1877 fund raising speech.

As the century entered its last decade Union Square had become a center of commerce, the splendid homes having been razed for business buildings.   Although the Century Association had expected that what was by now numbered No. 109-111 East 15^th Street would be its “permanent abode;” on January 12, 1890 The Sun reported that “the conservative old club has finally determined to follow the march of things up town.”

One year later, almost to the day, the Century, now with 800 members, took possession of its McKim, Mead & White-designed clubhouse on West 43^rd Street.  Before the end of the year The United States Brewers’ Association had taken over the old building.

The Association had been formed in 1862 and now had a membership of about 1,000 throughout the U.S.  The group, according to "King’s Handbook of New York City" in 1892 sought “protection of its industry from prohibitory and unduly stringent laws, and cooperatives with the Government in the execution of the laws pertaining to malt liquors.”

"King's Handbook of New York City" published the above photograph in 1892 (copyright expired)

The Association put a spin on its product, asserting to Victorian morality that the drinking of beer reduced the indulgence in alcohol.  “It is contended by the Association that the industry it represents is in the interest of temperance and morality, as its effect is to diminish the consumption of intoxicating liquors,” said the handbook.

Unlike the Century Association before it, the Brewers’ Association had political goals on its agenda.  In December 1898 a “congress” of brewers from across the United States was held to call upon Congress to abolish the war tax on beer.  During the Spanish-American War both the saloon keeper and the consumer paid a tax to help offset war expenses.

“Now the peace treaty is about to be signed and the first thing that should be done to relieve the people is the abolishment of this tax,” said a speaker.   “The people” were common Americans, he contended.  “The tax affects the farmer as well as the brewer.”

The Sun was more interested in the members than the purpose of the congress.   When millionaires were mentioned, it was bankers and railroad moguls who came to mind.  But many beer brewers had amassed enormous fortunes.  “This will be the first time in the history of this or any other city where so many millionaires have gathered at one hall at the same time,” the newspaper predicted.  It estimated the aggregate worth of the delegates to be over $400 million.

The ire of dignified socialites and religious leaders was no doubt raised when they read accounts of a meeting here on December 18, 1901.  A resolution was passed that read, in part, “It is the sense of this board that a law permitting in the City of New York the sale of liquors, ales, wine and beer on Sunday, between the hours of 1 P. M. and 11 P. M., is one consonant with the needs of this community.”

Justice William Travers Jerome spoke saying “Once realizing the facts, I do not see how any thinking man can believe that I am not right in my view of this question.  Some 200,000 of the population of this city want to be able to secure liquor on Sunday, and I do not see that it is my province, or any one else’s to prescribe a code of morals for so considerable a body of citizens, whatever may be our personal desires as to drinking on Sundays.”

It was just the sort of added stimulation the Prohibitionists were looking for, and 1901 saw increased activity in the Temperance movement.

In 1915 the Brewers’ Association fired back at the Temperance leaders, publishing an advertisement disguising itself as an educational list in “The World Almanac & Book of Facts.”   Included in the long list were assertions that:

·         A marked decrease in drunkenness has been noted as a result of the increased sales of beer.

·         Prohibition has gained little or no headway in New York State notwithstanding the persistent and continued activities on the part of the various prohibition organizations.

·         The traffic in alcoholic beverages pays an annual direct tax of nearly $20,000,000 to the State of New York in addition to other taxes; more than one-third of the entire State Budget.

The advertisement did not work.

In September 1918 the Fuel Administration issued an order prohibiting the brewing of beer after December 1.  A meeting at the United States Brewers’ Association building was immediately called.  The ramifications of the order were far-reaching.

There were 9.673 saloons in the five boroughs.  Their closing would mean tens of thousands of New Yorkers would lose their employment--there were at the time around 25,000 bartenders alone.  The breweries had enormous reserve stocks of grain and other ingredients; not to mention the thousands of barrels of beer stored in gigantic tanks.

Then, on January 16, 1919, the 18^th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified prohibiting the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” and on October 28 of that year the Volstead Act was passed to enforce the new laws. 

The Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the major player in the movement, had gotten its way.  In doing so they left jobless “middle-aged and elderly men still in the business in which they have always worked,” as described by The New York Times.

They also put an end to the United States Brewers’ Association.

For some time the Interboro Mutual Indemnity Insurance Company, originally organized in 1914 as the Brewers Mutual Indemnity Insurance Company, stayed on in the building.  Throughout the 20th century it saw a variety of uses.  In the 1920s it became home to the Manhattan chapter of the Sons of Italy Hall, and in the 1930s the Galicia Sporting Club.

Eventually No. 109-111 East 15^th Street was occupied by the New York Joint Board of Shirt, Leisurewear, Robe and Sportswear Workers Union; then an Asian-American trading company that also ran a dry cleaning shop in the basement.

In 1996 a year-long restoration and renovation of the building was initiated by Beyer Blinder Belle, transforming the former clubhouse into the Century Center for the Performing Arts.  The new facility included a 248-seat theater, a studio and a ballroom.

After a decade it was taken over as the New York City production facility for the world’s largest religious television network, Trinity Broadcasting Network.  The company offers 24 hours of commercial-free programming aimed at Protestant, Catholic and Jewish audiences.

With minor alterations (the iron cresting of the roof is gone, as are the entrance steps, and the basement windows are now doorways), the distinguished clubhouse is mainly unchanged.  It was designated a New York City landmark in 1993.