The Lost All Souls' Church Rectory - 104 East 20th Street

An orgy of visual delights, Mould's design included a circular overlight above the entrance and a balcony at the third floor.  Old Buildings of New York City, 1907 (copyright expired)

Born in 1814, the Rev. Dr. Henry Whitney Bellows graduated from Harvard and the Cambridge Divinity School.  He was appointed pastor of the First Congregational Unitarian Church in 1839, the name of which was later changed to the Unitarian Church of All Souls.  A powerful orator, he was admired for his ability to speak without preparation with remarkable lucidity and style.  He was the author of many pamphlets and lectures.  His interests were not restricted to religion.  He was made an honorary member of the National Academy of Design in 1849, and was attentive to medical issues.

Decades later, in 1914, The Pacific Unitarian recalled that by 1852 "the First Congregational Church had grown so strong that once again it decided to move to a more desirable part of town."  Land was acquired on the southeast corner of Fourth Avenue (later Park Avenue South) and 20th Street, "one of the choicest residence parts of the city, still certified by Gramercy Park, near by."

The trustees set out to find an architect, initially choosing C. F. Anderson.  Although the board approved his plans it's president, Moses H. Grinnell, rejected them.   He had his eye on a young English architect, 27-year old Jacob Wrey Mould.  The Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide explained later, "Mr. Mould came to this country, it is said, at the instance of Moses H. Grinnell, to design a Unitarian church.  At any rate his first employment was to design the Church of All Souls."

Mould's plans, submitted to the board of trustees on July 8, 1853, were possibly shocking to some of its more conservative members.  His vibrant Italian Romanesque design featured alternating red brick and white limestone creating a striped effect.  As Helen W. Henderson explained in her 1917 A Loiterer in New York, “This was...long before New York had become accustomed to see planted, on her stern rock foundations, those exotics that now bloom so easily in the strong sea-light of the island city.” 

Whether the other board members approved on not, Grinnell was won over.  Rev. Bellows would later remark that Grinnell was "bewitched by the architect."

The rectory sits behind the church, which took on the popular name The Church of the Holy Zebra.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

As architecturally unorthodox as the church was the rectory, directly behind at No. 104 East 20th Street.  Mould continued the striped motif in the residence, but its effect was greatly diluted by the prominent repetition of arched and circular openings.  A projecting second story bay supported by beefy supports like backwards buttresses stole the spotlight with its paired windows within a large red-and-white arch.

Rev. Bellows sat for Civil War photographer Matthew Brady for this portrait.  from the collection of the Library of Congress

Bellows's wife was the former Eliza Nevins Townsend, whose father, Elihu Townsend, had been one of the founders of the First Congregational Church in 1819.  Their daughter Anna told church historian H. S. Bates "of the time when the Bellow family moved into the parsonage, adjoining the new church, and of her delight at its large, lofty rooms and numerous passages which her mother found most impracticable for house-keeping."  She was quoted by Helen Henderson as adding "I thought the complicated and somewhat mysterious and inconvenient parsonage delightful, but my mother did not."

Family historian Thomas Bellows, in his The Bellows Genealogy, described Eliza as "a woman of strong spiritual and intellectual endowments and, although always delicate in health, entered heart and soul into the various duties of domestic and parochial life."

The wife of the pastor of a wealthy congregation like this one (it counted among its influential and well-known members the likes of William Cullen Bryant, Peter Cooper, and Joseph H. Choate) oversaw a domestic staff like other society women.  

Things apparently did not always work out with servants; but Eliza Bellows seems to have been accommodating in allowing them to see prospective employers in the house.  An advertisement in The New York Herald on September 30, 1856 read:  "Wanted--A situation by a respectable woman, as laundress, who has a perfect knowledge of her business, and has the best of city references.  Can be seen for two days at the parsonage of All Souls' church, corner of 20th st. and 4th avenue."  And in May 1858 another servant was looking to move on.  Her ad read, "Wanted--A situation by a respectable girl, as waitress, or as chambermaid and waitress.  Apply at Dr. Bellows' parsonage house, All Soul's church."

Eliza was hostess to any number of gatherings in the rectory.  Thomas Bellows recalled "Their home was always the centre of a wide and generous hospitality, and the young minister lent a patient and willing ear to all sorts of appeals in behalf of educational and philanthropic schemes with which he was supposed to have sympathy."

Among the groups that would meet in the library or drawing room was the Sanitary Commission, formed by Bellows after he convinced President Lincoln of the need to protect soldiers in the field as much as possible against unsanitary conditions.  In an open letter to the Executive Finance Committee in the City of New York in 1861 Bellows pleaded in part "In such a struggle, it is madness to waste a single hour, still more a single life.  Most of all should we avoid the ruinous delay of slowly replacing in the wasted camp the tens of thousands which our neglect may thoughtlessly leave to die, almost within our sight."

Following the war the house saw meetings of the Flower Mission, which distributed fresh flowers to hospitals during the warm months of June through September, and the American Society of Civil Engineers.  

The women of the Flower Mission distribute flowers in the Women's Ward of the Convalescent Hospital.  Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, May 5, 1877 (copyright expired) 

Having served as pastor for 43 years, Rev. Bellows died on January 30, 1882.  The congregation created a Memorial Fund for the Bellows family of $50,000--just under $1.3 million today.  A life-sized bronze memorial tablet designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens was installed in the main church in 1883.

Saint-Gaudens's massive bronze tablet of Bellows.  A Loiterer in New York, 1917 (copyright expired)

The rectory was converted to the Church House (the new pastor, Rev. Theodore Chickering Williams was provided a home at No. 150 West 59th Street).  In 1914 The Pacific Unitarian wrote "Pictures of the various pastors of the church can be seen on the walls of the room where the Woman's Alliance of All Souls' Church holds its meetings together with some rare, old paintings of religious subjects."

The New York Flower Mission continued to be headquartered in the former rectory, and in 1909 the Unitarian Advance, a monthly magazine "of Progress in Religion" had its offices here.  The following year The Individual and Social Justice League of America was formed at a meeting in the building.  The New York Times described it as "an anti-Socialism organization, having in it many prominent preachers, educators, labor union men and legislators."

In 1929 the once-vibrant contrast of red brick and white stone was dulled by soot and grime and significant deterioration of the stonework below the second floor was evident.  photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

In 1917 Park Avenue, once lined with elegant mansions, was a busy thoroughfare.  The church doors were locked and the entrance was moved around the corner to the former rectory.  "One enters [the church] through Dr. Bellows' house," explained Helen Henderson in her A Loiterer in New York, "now transformed into a church house and a hive of useful activities."  She lamented, however, that the church proper was "neglected and shabby.  Its stone work is scaling off, its garden is overgrown, and its gates padlocked and rusty."

The congregation sold the property in 1929 for $475,000--more than $7 million today.  The church sat empty for two years before being destroyed by fire on August 23, 1931.  The ruins and its rectory, called by The New York Times "one of the most remarkable architectural creations ever placed upon Manhattan Island," were replaced by a brown brick apartment building.

The Church of the Good Shepherd -- No. 152 West 66th Street

In 1887 development of the Upper West Side was picking up speed after the Panic of 1873 had brought construction nearly to a standstill.  Now, lured by improved transportation, new sewer lines, and street paving, developers rapidly filled blocks with rows of upscale and middle-class homes.

But not all of the Upper West Side was so comfortable.  The neighborhood that somehow acquired the nickname San Juan Hill stretched roughly from 59^th Street to 65^th, and from Amsterdam Avenue to 11^th Avenue. While New York’s other grittiest neighborhoods--Hell’s Kitchen immediately to the south, Mulberry Bend and Five Points—were made up of a mix of ethnicities, San Juan Hill’s residents were almost exclusively black.    It was a district of gang violence, bloodshed, poverty and hopelessness.

With development came the need for stores, schools and churches.   The West Presbyterian Church on 42^nd Street took a page from its Episcopalian and Roman Catholic counterparts and laid plans for a mission church. 

On January 6, 1884 a meeting was held in the church, led by its well-known pastor the Rev. Dr. John R. Paxton.  Frank Leslie’s Sunday Magazine described it as “a meeting in the interest of church extension in this city.”  The magazine noted that “The need of new churches on the east and west sides…was spoken of in detail.”

For the West Side the church chose the plot of land at No. 152 West 66^th Street; on the eastern fringe of San Juan Hill.  And for its architect it selected J. C. Cady & Company.  Josiah Cleaveland Cady, who was known professionally as J. Cleaveland Cady, designed a wide variety of structures—from hotels and libraries to churches and synagogues.  In 1887 he put pencil to paper for the design of what would become the Church of the Good Shepherd.

It would be another six years before the church became a reality.  On February 4, 1893 The Evening World reported “The new Church of the Good Shepherd, on Sixty-sixth street, west of the Boulevard, will be dedicated at 11 o’clock to-morrow morning.”  It added “The church is a branch of Dr. Paxton’s West Presbyterian Church on Forty-second street.”

Costing $90,000 (in the neighborhood of $2.5 million today), it was capable of seating 750 worshipers.  Cady had produced a charming Italian Romanesque structure of light-colored brick.  The New-York Tribune called it “characteristic of many old Italian churches.”  Indeed, it shared many elements of country churches of the Southern Sicilian Romanesque style.

Within its first years the mission church seems to have done what it was intended to do—serve the underprivileged residents of San Juan Hill.  But that success came with a cost.  On May 16, 1900 the annual meeting of the congregation of the West Presbyterian Church was held.  Reports were read concerning the activities of the church’s various organizations.

The New-York Tribune reported on the following morning that “Mrs. Hannah’s report of the work in the Church of the Good Shepherd, a mission of the West Presbyterian Church was very gratifying.”  But, it admitted, in a not-so-Christian response to African American worshipers, many congregants had left.  “In reading a report of the pastor of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Dr. Evans said that the flood of colored population in the neighborhood of the church caused a falling off, and that 129 names had been stricken from the rolls.  Still, the church was prosperous.”

In 1926 pastor Rev. Dr. F. R. Clee was called upon to lead an unusual funeral service.  William Henry Johnson had died of pneumonia at the age of 84 in Bellevue Hospital.  His funeral was held at the Campbell’s Funeral Church nearby at 66^th Street and Broadway, on April 28.

Better known as “Zip—What Is It?,” he was called by The New York Times “the famous freak, one of the first to be exhibited by P. T. Barnum back in the ‘60s.”  The newspaper’s account of the funeral was less reverential than sarcastic.

“Circus sideshow folk, giants, fat girls, sword swallowers, tattooed men and rubber-neck men filled the chapel, and their faces showed their sorrow.”  The article listed performers who had come from as far away as Chicago. “Then there was Alfonso, the human ostrich, who ate glass and other things for thirty-five years alongside of Zip at the sideshows of the circus and at Coney Island…Other circus freaks who attended were Lillian Maloney, the Albino girl; Carrie Holt, fat girl; Gus Birchman, the iron claw man; Frank Graef, tattooed man; Ajax, sword swallower; Joe Kramer, the rubber neck man, and Maharajah, the ‘This way, laydees and gentl-el-men’ lecturer of the Seaside circus sideshow of Coney Island, where Zip spent his Summers.”

Johnson’s funeral was, despite the description, conducted with dignity.  Organist and tenor Alexander Blander sang “Lead Kindly Light” and “Going Home,” from Anton Dvorak’s New World Symphony.

On November 13, 1932 the 45^th anniversary of the Church of the Good Shepherd was celebrated.  In his sermon that morning, the Rev. William F. Wefer questioned whether things had really changed much in nearly half a century.

“A striking sameness may be noticed in the years 1887 and 1932.  About forty-five years ago we had sweeping Democratic victories just as we had this past week.  Charges of political corruption were hurled about then.

“The problems of that day were much the same as our own.  Fashions may change, but there is still the clamor over women’s dress.  Today we have gangsters, then we had gangs.  Today we have speakeasies, then we had ‘blind pigs.’  The ‘by-cycle-scorchers’ have given way to the reckless automobile drivers.”

Certainly one thing that had not changed was San Juan Hill.  The 1940 census indicated that the neighborhood was still exclusively black.  Residents still struggled and families were confronted with the problems of violence, gangs and crime.

Twelve-year old Martha Punt was one of the local girls who tried to better herself.  She regularly attended Sunday School at the Church of the Good Shepherd.  Martha lived with her mother, Elizabeth James, who was separated from her second husband.  The girl tried her best to survive in the squalid neighborhood.  In December 1943 a 63-year old street cleaner was accused of “trying to impair the child’s morals,” according to The New York Times.  The charge was dismissed on December 19.

Martha Punt would never make it to her teen years.

A month later, on the morning of January 20, 1943, her brutally battered body was found in the “poorly furnished” fourth floor apartment of two kitchen workers, at No. 513 West 59^th Street.  She had been beaten about the head with a claw hammer and her throat cut.

The tragedy brought together at least some of the locals.   Three days later The New York Times reported “Martha Punt will not be buried in potter’s field, for the people of San Juan Hill yesterday were able to raise $138 to give the slain 12-year old schoolgirl a fitting funeral service and burial.

“Even strangers strolled into Abe Sable’s bar and grill at 2 Amsterdam Avenue to deposit dollar bills and coins in a beer container to help the family of the girl, who was brutally beaten to death in an apartment at 513 West Fifty-ninth Street Wednesday morning.”

The pastor of Good Shepherd, the Rev. Charles E. Souter, officiated at Martha’s funeral.

By now the name of the church had become Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church.  When Faith Chapel, another of West Presbyterian Church’s missions, gave up its building at No. 423 West 46^th Street, the two congregations merged.

Around 1953 the Comic Opera Guild began giving presentations at Good Shepherd.  It was the beginning of a tradition of musical concerts and plays here.   But both concerts and religious services nearly came to an end when Robert Moses laid plans for his ambitious Lincoln Center project. 

Moses had been approached by Fordham University and the New York Philharmonic which were seeking venues in Mid-Manhattan.  His solution was to eradicate a slum and replace it with a fine arts complex.  He faced opposition by some groups—including the Lincoln Square Chamber of Commerce and the Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church.

On May 9, 1957 400 people attended at rally at the church to protest the redevelopment project.  While the envisioned Lincoln Center would replace urban blight; it would also put more than 40,000 residents on the street.

The local groups were defeated and the city began demolition of 16.3 acres of buildings—all except the Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church.  The stubborn little building managed to hold out as everything around it was bulldozed to rubble.

The church continues its role as a performance center—in the 1990s productions by the Seventh Sign Theater Company were staged here.  Ever changing with the neighborhood, it became home as well to the Korean Central Church and the Catholic Apostolic Parroquia del Espirit Santo y de Nuestra Senora de la Caridad.   The three Sunday services are performed--one each in English, Korean and Spanish.

The church is dwarfed by the 1980s structures that surround it.

The last vestige of San Juan Hill in the immediate Lincoln Center area, J. Cleaveland Cady’s remarkable Italian Romanesque mission church is a miraculous and stunning survivor.

photographs taken by the author

The 1897 Church of the Ascension -- 107th Street off Amsterdam

photo by Alice Lum

In 1885 The New York Times noted “The west side of the city presents just now a scene of building activity such as was never before witnessed in that section, and which gives promise of the speedy disappearance of all the shanties in the neighborhood and the rapid population of this long neglected part of  New York.”

The next decade would see the flurry of development in the Upper West Side continue.  By now passengers could ride public transportation north all the way to Harlem.  Architects played with a mixture of styles, creating eccentric rowhouses adorned with stained glass, carved gargoyles, turrets or balconies.  It seemed like the burgeoning neighborhood had everything—except a Catholic church.

In response Archbishop Michael Augustine Corrigan established the Roman Catholic Church of the Ascension on October 27, 1895, naming as pastor Rev. Nicholas M. Reinhart.  Plans for a new church structure moved swiftly.  A perfectly square plot of land, 100 by 100 feet, was purchased midblock on 107^th Street between Amsterdam Avenue and the Boulevard (later renamed Broadway).  On February 1, 1896 The Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide announced that the church intended to build a “one-story Romanesque granite church thereon, and reported that architects Schickel & Ditmars “have been retained to draw the plans, which also include a rectory.” 

Bavarian-born William Schickel and his partner Isaac E. Ditmars were already responsible for many of the buildings of the New York Roman Catholic Diocese, beginning in 1879 with the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer.  For the Church of the Ascension, they would turn to Sicilian Romanesque for inspiration; while peppering the design with complimentary elements from other styles.

Two months later, on April 28 construction was underway when the Record and Guide announced the cost of the project would be around $60,000; or about $1.6 million today. 

By the end of June the basement had been completed and “the first tier of beams is laid,” said The Sun.  The elaborate cornerstone ceremonies were conducted on June 28 and The Sun reported the following day that “Five thousand people endured the rain yesterday to witness the laying of the corner stone of the Catholic Church of the Ascension.”  The New York Times noted that “The ceremony was performed with all the pomp that the ritual of the Catholic Church prescribes, but the occasion was rendered even more important by the presence of Archbishop M. A. Corrigan as the officiating clergyman.”

The ceremonies had begun at the Lion Park Hall, where the congregants were temporarily worshiping.  Then a march proceeded to the Home of the Little Sisters of the Poor on East 106^th Street where a service was held in the chapel.  Then the rain-drenched participants marched to the building site where a temporary floor had been laid and “a platform decorated with flags and flowers built,” said The Sun.  According to The New York Times “The houses in the vicinity of the church and along Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues were decorated in honor of the event, and on every side was to be seen the Papal colors—yellow and white—twined with the American flag.”

More than 50 priests from the surrounding area assisted the Archbishop, whom The New York Times described as being “robed in the rich vestments of his office, together with a magnificent cope and jeweled mitre.”  There were altar boys and acolytes “in their bright cassocks and lace surplices, and with burning tapers.”  Twenty-six church societies were among the crowd and a band played music “that helped make the occasion more enjoyable,” opined The New York Times.

Two sermons were given, one in English by the Rev. Thomas Campbell; the other in German by the Rev. Jerome Henkel.  Finally Archbishop Corrigan blessed the cornerstone and the copper box was sealed within it by Rev. Reinhart who used a silver trowel.

Inside the box were United States currency “of this year’s mint,” copies of New York daily newspapers, plans of the church with a sketch of the completed structure, and a parchment document with the names of the Archbishop and various dignitaries of the archdiocese.

At the end of the ceremonies, Rev. Reinhart envisioned “to have his church finished a year hence,” said The New York Times, which predicted “The church will be one of the most magnificent on the upper west side.”  The newspaper got the construction facts slightly wrong saying “It will be of Romanesque type of architecture, the front being of white marble and the interior of pressed brick over a skeleton of steel.”

By the middle of December construction had advanced to the roof.  To help pay for the expensive project, the women of the church held fairs in the basement—a common fund-raising tactic throughout the city.  On December 15 just before supper time, the afternoon fair was over and at 5:00 the roofers went home.  The men placed their “furnace” filled with hot coals into the stone cupola for safety where the coals would burn themselves out.  But an hour later high winds arose and showers of sparks from the furnace eddied out of the cupola against the darkening sky.

A passerby, seeing the red embers flying from the cupola, believed the building was on fire and sent out an alarm.  Firemen arrived and anxious neighbors rushed from their homes onto the sidewalk.  The firemen used an extinguisher on the little furnace and the temporary tumult was over.

The following day The New York Times reported “A fair is in progress in the basement of the church, but at the time the alarm was sent out the afternoon crowd had gone home, and there were not more than a dozen ladies and gentlemen in the building.  There was some excitement in the neighborhood, but none in the church, and the fair went on as usual last night.”

As the Rev. Reinhart had predicted, the church and its abutting parish house were completed in 1897.  The medieval, rigidly-symmetrical façade was faced in rough-cut gray granite   Three recessed entrances within connecting arches were accessed by a short flight of stone steps.  Above this base a simple bracketed cornice supported the upper portion, the focal point of which was a large rose window.  The window sat on a delicate blind arcade of stone columns.  A stone corbel table, twin cone-topped towers and decorative buttresses completed the church's Southern Italian complexion.

The parish house shared the 100-foot plot -- photo by Alice Lum

The interior featured a soaring barrel-vaulted ceiling and stencil-decorated arches supported by plaster columns expertly painted to resemble marble.  Above each arch a circular stained glass window streamed light into the space.

The early congregation was composed of a mixture of nationalities and social ranks.  But a large number of the parish were German and Irish immigrants who rubbed elbows in the pews with more upscale members.  One of these was Hugh McNulty, a wholesale butcher.

McNulty was 60 years old when he entered the church on Sunday morning October 4, 1903.  He had risen early that morning, left home to attend to some business and returned around 9:00 for breakfast.  In seemingly good health, according to his family, he went to church.

In the middle of the service “the congregation was startled by a sudden groan that sounded from a pew at the rear of the church,” said The New York Times the following day.  A nearby doctor was called as ushers pulled McNulty to the vestibule.  When Dr. James Duffy arrived, Hugh McNulty was dead of a heart attack.

photo by Alice Lum

A year after McNulty’s tragic death in the church, all of New York City was terrorized by an epidemic of meningitis.  In 1905 it continued and already by March 18, 1905, the Health Department reported that 386 persons had succumbed to the disease that year.  That same day the New-York Tribune wrote that “Meningitis is still on the increase.  Last week the records of the Health Department show that it caused 99 deaths.”

Alarmingly, the Tribune reported “The latest well known sufferer from meningitis is the Rev. Dr. Edwin M. Sweeny, pastor of the Roman Catholic Church of the Ascension, in 107^th-st.  He has been ill for three weeks, and although his life has at times been despaired of he now is believed to stand a fair chance of recovery.”

Two days later the newspaper updated its readers, saying “It was said at his home that he was ‘holding his own,’ and was, if anything, a little better.  He is being attended by Drs. McAneny, Janesway and Booth.”  Despite the panic caused by the uncertainty of the cause of the horrific disease, officials of the Catholic Church, Monsignor Edwards, Monsignor Mooney and Father Lavelle, risked their own health by visiting the ailing priest.

Within the next year the meningitis epidemic was over and Rev. Sweeny had fully recovered.  By 1908 he was fully able to participate in the extravagant celebrations surrounding the visits to New York of Cardinal Logue, Primate of All Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh.  Three years later he oversaw the construction of the church’s four-story school on 108^th Street.

photo by Alice Lum

Of the many weddings and funerals held in the church at the time, perhaps none was more notable than that of Edward Harrigan, actor and impresario.  Born of Irish immigrant parents, he started his career as an Irish comic singer in a San Francisco saloon in 1867.  By the mid-1880s he was well known as half of the Harrigan & Hart vaudeville team.  Following their breakup, he continued on as an actor and theater owner.  In 1891 he opened his grand Harrigan’s Theatre at the corner of Sixth Avenue and West 35^th Street, just off Herald Square.

Edward Harrigan took his last bow on stage on March 16, 1910.  Less than a year later, on June 9, 1911, his funeral was held at the Church of the Ascension.  The New York Times reported that over 1,000 mourners attended the solemn requiem high mass.  The church was filled with luminaries from the theatrical field, along with a Supreme Court Justice, former Borough President and former Police Captain and an Assemblyman.

Just before the services began, a blind man “about 70 years old and led by an aged woman” appeared at the door of the church.  The man asked permission to touch Harrigan’s coffin.  The New York Times recounted “He said that he had come from Yonkers, and that before he lost his sight he had seen the actor in every play he had produced.”

In a heart-warming gesture, as the pallbearers brought Harrigan’s casket up the aisle, they paused long enough for the blind man to put his hand on it.

In the first half of 1919 the country was torn by the debate over Prohibition.  Five months before enactment of the National Prohibition Act, known as the Volstead Act, Father William B. Farrell was making his stance undeniably clear.  Charles E. Hughes was a former Justice of the United States Supreme Court and had run for President in 1916.  He now had his own legal practice.  Father Farrell had no intention of someone with Hughes’ credentials swaying public opinion to the side of alcohol.

He made a formal statement to the press on Tuesday night, February 4, 1919 saying “he had been told on ‘excellent authority’ that Mr. Hughes, Elihu Root and Louise Marshall had been retained as counsel to oppose national prohibition.”

Hughes was quick to refute the priest’s charges.  “I ought to say that there is no truth in the statement that I have given an opinion to the effect that the prohibition amendment is unconstitutional.  I have given no opinion upon the subject.  There is also no trust in the report that I have been retained to assail the amendment.  I have no connection with the matter.”

photo by Alice Lum

Today the interior has been restored and, despite a few alterations like replacement entrance doors, the Church of the Ascension is little changed after over a century of serving the Upper West Side.