A 1904 Horse and Carriage Auction House -- Nos. 126-128 E. 13th Street

photo by Alice Lum

By 1903 the Van Tassell & Kearney Auction Mart had established itself as one of the premier houses in New York City for the sale of carriages as well as horses. That year an ad appearing in the New York Tribune boasted “Finest display in New York of Carriages of the highest grade and most fashionable designs. Broughams, omnibuses, victorias, station wagons, wagonetts, traps.”

To the 21st century mind, Victorian horse-drawn transportation were “carriages.” But just as we differentiate among SUV’s, sedans, convertibles, sports cards and minibuses, the turn of the century buyer purchased vehicles specific to his needs.

Van Tassell & Kearney sold various vehicles including "gooch wagons," tub carts," and "governess carts."

Van Tassell & Kearney operated from buildings at Nos. 130-132 East 13th Street and Nos. 125 to 129 East 12th Street. In February 1903 two four-story brick buildings at Nos. 126 and 128 East 13th Street became available at auction and were purchased by John J. Sullivan. The cleared lot would become an adjoining showroom and auction space for Van Tassell & Kearney’s Auction Mart.

Completed in 1904, the masculine, utilitarian structure was designed by the prominent architectural firm of Jardine, Kent, and Jardine. Constructed of red brick and contrasting limestone, it was a brawny mass with Beaux Arts splashes – the visual focus being a large central arched window embellished with a carved cartouche.

Carved, decorative stonework added interest to the utilitarian structure -- photo by Alice Lum

Van Tassell & Kearney’s not only sold to New York’s most elite – among them buyers with names like Belmont, Vanderbilt and Mackay – but they were trusted by the wealthy to sell their own stock.

In 1904 the book “Prominent and Progressive Americans” spoke of retired Dr. W. E. Woodend. “Dr. Woodend and his wife are popular members of society, and have been prominent in many of the horse shows which have come to be leading social functions. They maintain a fine stable of horses…In the New York Horse Show of 1903 their horses were conspicuous prize-winners, and in the course of the show captured no fewer than twenty ribbons.”

On March 13, 1906 some of Dr. Woodend’s geldings were among the 24 horses auctioned at Van Tassell & Kearney’s; the total sale amounting to $11,250 – more than a quarter million dollars today.

The architects created sunburst effects with creative brickwork around the oval windows -- photo by Alice Lum

A year later The New York Tribune reported that “Mrs. John Gerken, always one of the most prominent figures at the Horse Show, has decided to give up nearly her entire stable. Her failure to carry off as many awards as usual at the last horse show, she says, has nothing to do with her determination. Her only object, she says, is to get rid of the trouble and annoyance of a big stable. She will maintain only eight show horses. The rest will be sold on May 20 by Van Tassell & Kearney.”

That year was a good one for the firm.  In October the New York Herald mentioned “At Van Tasell & Kearney’s regular semi-weekly auction sale on Tuesday a cabriolet brought $760 and a brougham brought $825. These are record prices for second-hand carriages sold this season and are almost up to the standard of values current when automobiles were unknown. Not less significant than the prices were the number and character of the bidders who came to buy these and other carriages in the last week’s sales.”

The reporter said that Mr. Kearney was very pleased and “it looked quite like old times.” It appeared to the auctioneer that the fad of the automobile was fading and “the carriage horse is coming back.”

Van Tassell & Kearney custom-built this trap for "Mr. LaSalla."  The 500-lb. vehicle could be drawn either by one or two horses -- The Rider and Driver 1911

Although the era of the carriage horse would not come back, it would be a while before it disappeared entirely. In 1911 The Rider and Driver magazine marveled at the Van Tassell & Kearney’s operations. “Few people are aware of the magnitude of their premises and the extent of business they are doing with our wealthiest and most critical class of carriage buyers in town and country. Their patrons include members of the Cabinet and foreign ministers, prominent citizens, city officials; and at all horse shows, floral parades and summer resorts are to be seen every description of traps from Van Tassell & Kearney’s.”

In 1911 Van Tassell & Kearney introduced the "Horse Show Dog Cart," a small trap-type carriage --The Rider and Driver 1911 

The magazine described in detail the assembly of buildings, with underground space that ran from 13th to 12th Streets. “The basement is fitted up for accommodating one hundred and fifty horses, where they are stabled in well-ventilated stalls.”

The firm steadfastly refused to accept the invasion of the automobile into the staid tradition of horse-drawn buggies and carriages. On July 28, 1918, as more and more motorcars chugged along the streets and avenues of New York, a Van Tassell & Kearney ad in the New York Tribune insisted “The report that horses and carriages are coming back to their own in Newport is positively founded on fact.”

The prediction, of course, was not to be and before long the venerable auction house that refused to adapt to change was no more.

The cavernous building was used a a machinery shop in the decades leading to World War II. Then on December 28, 1941 the Delehanty Institute announced it would be using the building as instructional space. With most of the able-bodied men off fighting in the Pacific and Europe, the institute opened “a branch in machine shop practice for women” here. The former auction space was used for teaching women “assembly and inspection work, the reading of blueprints, and various mechanical aspects needed in defense industries.”

In 1978 artist Frank Stella took over the building, using it as his studio for 27 years. It was from here that the influential artist added free-standing sculpture to his painting and print-making art. In 2005 the building was sold to Isaac Mishan for $10 million. Mishan planned to demolish the structure to replace it with a seven-story sleek condo building.

A proposed 7-story condo was slated to replace the old auction mart -- sketch Gothamist.com

Preservationists rushed in. By September 3, 2006 the developer had construction permits in hand, but demolition permits had not be issued. At an emergency meeting of the Landmarks Preservation Commission the next day, politicians including State Senator Tom Duane, Assemblywoman Deborah Glick and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer pleaded to save the building. Local residents joined representatives from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the Municipal Arts Society, and the Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian Society in America in the appeal.

During the meeting Johnathon Hayes who lived in the neighborhood asserted “The space cries out for adaptive reuse…We cannot live by luxury condominiums alone.”

Although to this day the Landmarks Preservation Commission has not designated the structure, the owners were swayed. They voluntarily allowed it to be listed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places, giving up the right to alter the exterior or build on it in anyway inconsistent with historic preservation guidelines. In exchange they received a substantial tax write-off.

In 2007 the Peridance Center leased the building and began a nearly three-year renovation. When opened in December 2009, it housed six roomy climate-controlled, soundproof dance studios, a 200-seat theater for the Peridance Contemporary Dance Company, a café and boutique.

The handsome old auction house where Belmonts and Vanderbilts shopped for show horses is a faultless example of creative recycling of historic properties.

The Hungarian Reformed Church -- 121 East 7th Street

photo by Alice Lum

It was not until after the unsuccessful Hungarian Revolution of 1848-1849 that the first real wave of Hungarian immigrants began arriving in New York City.  But by the 1870’s there were more than 10,000 Hungarians in Manhattan living in, for the most part, the Lower East Side and the Yorkville neighborhood further uptown.

The Lower East Side, once a fashionable residential neighborhood of Federal and Greek Revival homes, was now an immigrant district often called Kleindeutchland—or “Little Germany.”    Here the new Hungarian immigrants lived peacefully shoulder-to-shoulder with the Germans.  In 1895 a small group founded The First Hungarian Reformed Church, or New York-i Első Magyar Református Egyház.  After worshiping in temporary spaces for a few years, the congregation sought out a permanent structure.

The old house at No. 121 East 7^th Street had been built shortly after Daniel Burnett bought the property in 1843.   Now, on May 10, 1902, The New York Times reported that the Hungarian Reformed Church had purchased the dwelling.   The group hired architect and builder Frederick Ebeling to convert the structure to a church building.

The building was consecrated in 1903.  Within the next year Ebeling extended church to the property line and incorporated a central bell tower characteristic of a Hungarian country church.  The quaint little church had a comfortable, overall charm.   And yet there was little to hide the fact that this was a house-turned-church.

photo by Alice Lum

The church’s pastor, Rev. Zoltan Kuthy, awarded The Medal of Virtue each year to the two congregants who best exhibited true virtue.  Kuthy’s three qualifications were that the winners must “be pure of thought, word and deed; must be of careful life in his habits; must be loyal to his church.”

Reverend Kuthy felt that attaining virtue should not be all that difficult for his Hungarian flock.  “You see, the real Magyars are naturally good,” he told The Sun on June 2, 1912.  He said “as a race they are loving, law abiding and not a roistering people.”

The winner of the medal that year tended to disagree.  Michael Garan had attempted to win the prize since 1909.  Finally he held it.  “I try, oh, so hard, to be good, but to be good is not easy,” he told a reporter.

photo by Byron Company from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWBZMW2C&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

Unfortunately, other congregants disagreed about which member was most virtuous.  When the names were leaked a few days before the presentation, an uproar erupted.  On May 25, 1912 The Sun reported “Then two other members of the congregation let it be known that they were the most charitable and kindly of the First Hungarian Reformed flock and would prove it by beating the pastor and the recipients of the medal.”

Police from the 5^th Street police station lined the sanctuary on Sunday May 24.  Reverend Zoltan had asked “for assistance in case other charitable and kindly men should start something,” said the newspaper.

“Capt. Ormsby assured the pastor that he would have uniformed policemen in the church, well up toward the pulpit, to see that the friends of the disappointed candidates for charitable and kindly distinction do not rend the garments of peace during the services.”

A misguided congregation decades later would encase the stone facade in artificial stone -- photo by Alice Lum

By 1914 the growing congregation and the stiflingly-crowded Lower East Side neighborhood prompted the First Hungarian Reformed Church to move uptown.   A plot was purchased at 344 East 69^th Street and Hungarian-born architect Emery Roth set to work designing a new, larger structure—including the iconic central bell tower.  The new building was completed in 1916 and the congregation said good-bye to its house-turned church on East 7^thStreet.

The old building was purchased by the cumbersomely-named Christian Orthodox Catholic Church of the Eastern Confession in North America.     It became home to the Holy Resurrection Church and it would not be long before trouble ensued.

A year after moving into the new church, Evdokim Meschersky planned a trip to Russia.  Meschersky, too, had an unwieldy title:  “Archbishop of the Ecclesiastic Consistory of the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church, and the Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church, and the Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of North America.”

As his trip neared, on August 17, 1917 he appointed Vladimir Rykhloff “temporary rector” and priest of Holy Resurrection Church.   When the archbishop returned a year later, his temporary replacement was apparently not overjoyed to see him.

With both men claiming the title of archbishop, an ugly tug-of-war ensued.  Court papers claimed that Rykhloff “has refused to vacate the church and to cease officiating as a rector and priest thereof.”   No matter what Meschersky did, his underling continued officiating as though he were pastor of the congregation.  The frustrated archbishop was finally forced to take matters to the courts in November 1918.  The case would drag on for months.

In 1935 the building was sold to the Russian Orthodox St. Peter and Paul Church.  That the Lower East Side neighborhood was still highly-ethnic was reflected in the colorful funeral that took place in the church on July 20, 1938.

The funeral cortege of Louis De Metro, described byThe New York Times as a “20-year old member of a gypsy tribe,” brought vehicles to a standstill.  “Traffic on Avenue A, First Avenue and on Seventh and Eighth Streets, between Avenue A and First Avenue, was impeded for a time while the cortege moved along,” said the newspaper.

“Crowds of curious, who had read of the prayerful vigil kept by the youth’s friends outside Bellevue Hospital, lined the streets as the body was carried by members of the family and friends to Russian Orthodox St. Peter and Paul Church, 121 East Seventh Street, where the funeral service was conducted by the Very Rev. Alexander J. Chechila, the pastor.”

Many of the mourners were attired in “gypsy costume,” and a ten-piece ensemble played a dirge on the street outside the church.

photo by Alice Lum

The pastor was embarrassed when his 26-year old daughter was the subject of messy publicity a few years later.   On New Year’s Day 1942 The Times reported on the dueling lawsuits between Olga Chechila and 49-year old jewelry executive Harry S. Fischer.

Fischer lived in the penthouse apartment at No. 737 Park Avenue and on December 23 had given a party for “two men friends.”  The get-together ended in what The Timescalled “a fracas.”   While Olga told police that Fischer had stolen $1,000 in cash from her—money she had withdrawn from a bank as a Christmas present to her father; Fischer accused her of stealing a $3,200 diamond ring.   She insisted he had loaned her the ring “to wear at the party.”

Both parties were released on bail awaiting a hearing.

In1961, when St. Mary’s American Orthodox Greek Catholic Church purchased the building, the congregation thought it a good idea to modernize the structure by encasing Ebeling’s stone façade in “Naturestone;” an artificial stone material. 

It was not a good idea.

Despite the offensive make-over the little house-turned church retains its charm; a relic of a time when foreign-speaking immigrants drew together in a new land to worship together.

photo by Alice Lum

Mary, Help of Christians Church -- 440 East 12th Street

photo by Alice Lum

On April 21, 1931 a solid silver casket which the undertaker said had cost $15,000 was removed from the penthouse home of Giuseppe Masseria at 15 West 81^st Street.  Sixteen automobiles were necessary to transport the floral tributes and 69 cars followed the hearse in the funeral cortege.  The shining black cars moved through Manhattan from the ritzy Central Park neighborhood to the humble streets of the East Village and the Italian church of Mary, Help of Christians.

Masseria was best known as “Joe the Boss,” an underworld kingpin who had been shot down in Coney Island a few days earlier.   Undercover detectives mixed in with the mourners inside the church.  Three priests celebrated a solemn requiem mass in the sanctuary laden with flowers – most of which were from anonymous donors.  One exception was a heart of roses with a silk ribbon bearing the initials A. C.   It was from Alphonse Capone.

The church was not an overly-ornate one, nor was it a high-profile, important church among the New York Roman Catholic parishes.  It was however, integral to the Italian community.

As the turn of the century approached, the Lower East Side was filling with Italian immigrants.  In 1898 Archbishop Corrigan, cognizant of the need for increased spiritual guidance for the Italians, invited three Salesian Fathers from Italy to come to New York.  Initially they took charge of St. Brigid’s Parish.   But by 1906 the burgeoning Italian population required an additional parish.   Two houses on East 12^th street were purchased; one to be used as a rectory and Sunday school, the other as a chapel.

On July 8, 1908 the mission was elevated to the parish of Mary, Help of Christians.  A new church was now necessary in the midst of the Italian community.

The Catholic Church already owned land in the area.  It was the Roman Cemetery of the old St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  Among the 41,016 graves here was, oddly enough, that of Lorenzo da Ponte, Mozart’s librettist who was responsible for “Don Giavanni,” “Cosi fan Tutte” and “The Marriage of Figaro.”  Da Ponte had come to the United States in 1805, fleeing debtors, and was buried here on August 20, 1838.

The coffins in the Roman Cemetery were exhumed in 1909 and reburied in Calvary Cemetery.  There was now land for the new church.   In 1910 the basement was excavated.  Six masses were celebrated here every Sunday and one in the chapel.

Plans for the new church were filed by Domenico Briganti in 1911.  It would be a Florentine-inspired structure, nearly flat-faced, with two short towers on either end capped by domes.  Four shallow Corinthian pilasters would separate the three arched entrances and support a classical closed pediment.

Despite the enormous number of Italians being served by Mary, Help of Christians—according to the 1914 “The Catholic Church in the United States of America” there were 20,000 congregation members (“mostly Sicilians”)--it would not be until six years later, at 4:00 in the afternoon on July 15, 1917, that the cornerstone was laid for the new structure.  Mgr. Michael J. Lavelle, rector of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, officiated the ceremonies.

The zealously religious Italian congregation nearly caused a riot in September 1923 when they were refused permission by police to process through the streets with a statue of St. Rosalia on her feast day.  The New York Times reported that about 2,000 Italians “then marched to the rectory in Twelfth Street, near Avenue A, to demand that the church get them a permit.”  The newspaper related that the police arrived “just in time” to prevent a melee.”

A young man parks his impressive-looking car across from the church in 1920 -- NYPL Collection

Three years before Joe the Boss would be buried from Mary, Help of Christians, the gangland funeral of 21-year old Charles de Luco was held here on July 18, 1928.    Police watched vigilantly for the racketeer’s brother, Dominick de Luco, who failed to appear.  Nonetheless The Times reported that “gangdom was well represented at the funeral.”

The church was always much more than merely the movie-like scene of gangster funerals.  It was the spiritual home to a multitude of pious immigrant families.   On the feast day of Mary, Help of Christians in 1933, “several thousand residents of the east side Italian colony participated in ceremonies,” as reported in the newspapers.

On March 19, 1935 the parish had a scare when the church caught fire during mass.   Most of the worshipers were women and many had knelt before the altar of the St. Joseph’s Chapel prior to services to light candles.  Father Peter Pelegrino was serving communion later to 50 persons and the heads of the other parishioners were bowed in prayer.  No one noticed the lit candle fall from its holder in the chapel.

By the time sexton Jack Gulino noticed the blaze, it had engulfed the tapestries and embroidered altar cloths.  The flames caught the wax flowers that wound around a five-foot wooden arch that framed the statue of St. Joseph.  The flammable wax melted and spread the flames fifteen feet upward.

While Gulino and ushers attempted to beat the flames with their bare hands, the pastor, Father Paul Zolin instructed the women in their pews to remain calm.   The priest then helped pry the wooden frame loose.  Gulino and the ushers hauled the flaming arch to a backroom to stamp it out.  The statue of St. Joseph crashed to the floor and smashed.

Father Zolin again instructed the 200 women who were clustered around the chapel to return to their pews.  Services continued outside.

One of the interesting congregants of Mary, Help of Christians was “Mr. Valentine.”   His profession was collecting sounds for photograph records, Broadway shows, motion pictures and such.  When Lord & Taylor Department Store needed church chimes for their Christmas window display in 1940, Mr. Valentine obliged.   “I could have used Trinity or one of the big churches, but I’m loyal to my own parish.  The Lord & Taylor bells you heard were the chimes from Mary, Help of Christians Church on Twelfth Street,” he told a reporter.

By mid-century the Italian population was thinning out in the 12^th Street area.  The four-story convent on East 11^th Street, no longer necessary, was converted into apartments.  But it was not the end of the line for the church.  Not yet.

In 1953 Sara Delano Roosevelt, granddaughter of the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt was married.  She had fallen in love with Anthony di Bonaventura, the son of a 17^th Street Italian barber.  The couple chose not to be married in a society church, but in di Boneventura’s family parish of Mary, Help of Christians.   Although the ceremony was small with only a few friends and relatives invited, East 12^th Street was crowded with over 2,000 people from the tenement buildings who longed to get a glimpse of the unlikely couple.

The New York Times said the newly-weds posed for photographs “on the steps of the dingy, old-fashioned brick church, as the air rang with cheers and flurries of torn paper were flung from windows, fire escapes and roofs of the tenement façade opposite.”

By the 1970s the neighborhood, never an upscale one, saw an increase in crime.   The church was broken into three times within three months in 1973, the thieves taking the money from the poor boxes.  The neighborhood was also luring artists and poets.   In his “May Days 1988,” poet Allen Ginsburg described his view of Mary, Help of Christians from the window of his tenement apartment across the street.

In January 2007 the Archdiocese announced that the church of Mary, Help of Christians would be closed.  In an odd statement in his press release, Fr. James Heuser wrote “Communities and institutions, like persons, have a lifecycle.  By all accounts, Mary Help of Christians Parish has had a good run.”

Josephine Ruta and her sister Margaret, doubtlessly disagreed.    The women had lived in the same tenement building for over 80 years and had known only one church:  Mary Help of Christians.

But the "lifecycle" of the church had run its course and on May 20, 2007 the last mass was celebrated.  The lights were extinguished and the doors locked.  Inside, where Mafia funerals and a Roosevelt wedding had taken place, dust settles on the altar and pews.

photo by Alice Lum

The church sat vacant for six years.  Then early in 2013 the property was purchased by developer Douglas Steiner of Steiner Studios as the site of a luxury residential and retail structure.  Concerned local residents and preservationists appealed to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to intercede.  Despite the historic significance of the church, the 150-year old rectory and the 90-year old school building, the Commission declined.

The developer, simultaneously, refused to consider recycling of the venerable structures.  Andrew Berman, Executive Director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation pointed out "A smart developer would recognize that by preserving and re-using these historic buildings and b uilding on the large adjacent yard, he would not only be doing a good deed, but creating an infinitely more unique and valuable development than simply bulldozing the entire site and starting anew."

In May 2013, even as demonstrators rallied outside the church steps urging its preservation, another historic fragment was uncovered in plain sight.  An ancient stone wall, typical of those the protected early New York burial grounds runs between West 11th and West 12th Street; quite possibly the surviving wall of the old Roman Cemetery that predated the church.  It is yet another historic structure that would be erased by the planned development.

Although the dignified façade of Mary, Help of Christians, looks as fresh and maintained as it did a century ago, its future is uncertain.  Even in a time of improved architectural and historic appreciation, this integral page in the history of the Italian community in Manhattan may soon be obliterated.

The 1868 11th Street Methodist Episcopal Chapel - No. 545 East 11th St.

photo by Alice Lum

In the years following the end of the Civil War the area around Tompkins Square on the lower east side of Manhattan was populated with, mostly, Irish Catholic immigrants working in the nearby shipyards along the East River. The neighborhood increasingly saw the influx of Germans, however, who fled their homeland where unemployment, political and religious oppression and land shortages made life difficult.


Victorian ladies spent much time in charity work—an overt gesture of helping the poor; although usually at arm’s length. The Ladies Home Missionary Society was formed in 1844 and succeeded in founding missions in some of the most impoverished sections of the city, including the notorious Five Points neighborhood. In addition to the religious instruction, these missions provided food and clothing to the poor.

The Dry Dock Mission at the corner of East 9th Street and Avenue B was built between 1846 and 1847; however it was closed in 1864 when “the foreign population was rapidly gaining ascendency in the neighborhood and the congregation became discouraged,” according to Samuel A. Seaman in his 1892 “The History of the Methodist Episcopal Church.”

Yet The Missionary Society felt the area still needed a mission. Using the funds from the sale of the Dry Dock building as a start, the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church passed a resolution on August 12, 1867 to construct a mission on East 11th Street. The Board, of which William Wiggins Cornell was chairman, gave the contract for construction to James C. Hoe & Co, and G. F. Coddington.  Architects William Field and Son, known best for designing tenement buildings, would design the building.

By now Gothic Revival was replacing Greek Revival as the preferred style of church architecture. Unlike James Renwick’s lavish Grace Church on Broadway or his St. Patrick’s Cathedral rising on 5th Avenue; this structure needed to be less flashy. In 1770 John Wesley had clearly laid out his direction for church architecture: there should be little adornment, if any; worshipers should be supplied with adequate air and light; seating should be plain and simple and, ideally, the sanctuary should be eight-sided for good visibility and hearing.

The cornerstone was laid on in October 1867 and construction was completed within three months. The New York Times described the new chapel as “modernized Gothic, adapted to the locality and its internal arrangements.” Composed of red brick, two stories high, the Gothic the handsome, simple building had a lacy, arched corbel table; pointed finials at the corners and center of the roofline; and attractive window hood moldings.

The sale of the Dry Dock Mission building had provided $9,697.50 towards construction, which amounted to $25,000. Another $5,000 had been raised during construction and on the day of the dedication another $9,000 was raised. W. W. Cornell’s brother, Jack Black Cornell, provided the rest of the money needed to pay for the building.

The architects followed the Methodist tradition of symmetry and order in its design. The entrance way was centered between two first floor windows while three second story windows lined up above these openings.

Within the year William Wiggins Cornell, funded the Cornell Reading Room. The magnanimous Cornell brothers had made their fortunes in the J.B. & W. W. Cornell Iron Works and were erecting cast iron buildings throughout lower Manhattan. The New York Times described the room on March 27, 1869, saying it provided “intellectual instruction and amusement for persons of both sexes, above fourteen years of age, who live in that overcrowded and poverty-stricken locality. Supplied with books, magazines, newspapers, stereoscopes, zoetropes, and other parlor amusements.” (A zoetrope was a canister-type gadget with a series of pictures inside. By cranking a handle and turning the canister, the pictures seemed to move when the viewer looked through a small opening.)

George T. Powell was hired in 1874 to design a one-story Sunday school and lecture room in the rear of the building. By this time the Children’s Aid Society was busy shipping indigent boys to the American West as part of its “The Orphan Train Movement.” The boys were inspected by local farmers, chosen, then put to work. The theory was that the boys were better off by learning a means of livelihood and by escaping the evils of the tenement districts.

In a less radical move, the 11th Street Methodist Episcopal Chapel sent indigent children “into the country for two or three weeks,” as reported in the New York Times on May 21, 1895. The grim poverty of the children was obvious when that year the Chapel pled for second-hand clothing for the waifs. “The mission is hampered in its efforts to get the children into the country by a lack of clothing,” said the article.

As the turn of the century approached, the settlement movement was in full swing in American urban centers. The movement sought to alleviate poverty by educating the poor, including women and children, and introducing them to culture. In 1899 the church purchased the tenement building next door at No. 543 East 11th Street and hired architects Louis E. Jallade and Joel D. Barber to renovate and enlarge it. The new facility would have classrooms, a gymnasium, nursery, baths and a kindergarten. While they were at it, the firm moved the entrance to the church from the center to the left.

Although the architects matched the new window, where the original door had been, with the existing Gothic Revival windows; they disregarded the style entirely for the new doorway. Using instead the highly popular Colonial Revival style, they plopped a heavy stone lintel with splayed keystones upon a frame of brick quoins.

Renovations were completed in 1901 and the church and classroom building were opened; now called the People’s Home Church and Settlement. The settlement catered to the poor German and Italian immigrants in the neighborhood and offered services in both languages. The facility offered industrial classes, lessons in instrumental and vocal music, social clubs, a “fresh air program,” and a reading room.

The day nursery, opened in 1905, allowed women to work outside their homes without worrying about their children. By 1927 the congregation was, according to the Methodist New York East Conference Minutes, “almost entirely of foreign extraction.”

Despite its good works and the ongoing needs of the community, the People’s Home Church and Settlement closed its doors in 1930.

The building in 1930, the year The People's Home Church and Settlement closed its doors -- photo NYPL Collection

A Russian church began worshiping in the building the following year. In 1941 the Methodist Episcopal Church sold the church and the accompanying building at No. 543 to the Russian Ukrainian Polish Pentecostal Church. Although the Polish and Ukrainian factions established their own buildings later, the Russian congregation remained, conducting services in both Russian and English. In 1983 they renamed the church the Evangelical Christian Church.

Finally, in 1998, The Father’s Heart Ministries merged with the church, creating The Father’s Heart Ministry Center. Continuing the community-focused work upon which the building was founded, the Center provides family crises prevention and recovery, classes (including English as a Second Language), GED instruction, job training, hunger prevention programs and religious instruction.

The unassuming little church on East 11th Street which the AIA Guide to New York City calls “dignified eclecticism,” is remarkably preserved. Its quiet architecture does not scream for attention, exactly as the architects intended; but it should not be overlooked.

The 1902 Lying-In Hospital -- 305 Second Avenue

photo by Alice Lum

James Wright Markoe earned his medical degree in 1885 at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University.    The strapping young man was as physically-inclined as intellectually.  The New-York Tribune would later say of him “As a young man he was an athlete.  He spent much of his spare time in the gymnasium boxing, and was classed as one of the best amateur boxers at that time.”

Boxing would soon take a back-seat to a more humanitarian interest, however.  Following graduation he traveled to Munich where he spent a year advancing his medical studies.   While at The Frauenklinik of Von Winkel learning obstetrical procedures, he and fellow student Samuel W. Lambert recognized the need for a clinic in New York to help needy mothers-to-be.

Manhattan at the time was filling with immigrants who struggled to survive in grimy, crowded tenements.    Unsanitary conditions coupled with the inability to pay for medical help resulted in a catastrophic infant mortality rate within the tenement community.  Upon the doctors’ return to New York they established the Midwifery Dispensary in 1890.

The clinic opened in a house at No. 312 Broome Street and shortly thereafter was combined with the long-defunct Society of the Lying-In Hospital.   Expectant women flocked to the new facility, quickly resulting in the need for an expanded and improved space.

Dr. James Markoe not only practiced medicine among wealthy society, he was a member of it.  He held memberships in the exclusive Metropolitan, Century, Racquet and Tennis, and New York Yacht Clubs.    For years he was a vestryman in the highly-fashionable St. George’s Church on Stuyvesant Square.

Among James Markoe’s moneyed patients was millionaire J. Pierpont Morgan.  Markoe not only became his personal physician, but a close friend.    It was a friendship that would create financial advantages for Markoe’s pet project.

In 1894 the Hamilton Fish mansion at the corner of 17^thStreet and Second Avenue was purchased and converted for the hospital.  The New York Times said “In this fairly commodious house the work of the association has increased” and quickly the building was not sufficient to care for the stream of patients.  By 1895 the push was well underway to expand the Lying-In Hospital and build a new facility.  On March 14 of that year Mayor William Lafayette Strong introduced a bill appropriating $12,000 to the Society of the Lying-In Hospital—about a quarter of a million dollars in today’s money.

“The Mayor asked any one who had anything to say in opposition to the appropriation of $12,000 for the Lying-In Hospital to state their objections first,” reported The New York Times.  “No one responded, and the Mayor said that he was not surprised, as it would be a queer kind of man who would oppose such a charity.”

Private donations came in; but at a rather disappointing rate—at least to the mind of J. Pierpont Morgan.  In 1896 donors had given $53,738; not nearly enough to even consider a new structure.   On January 4, 1897 Morgan penned a letter to William A. Duer, the President of the Society of the Lying-In Hospital.

Dear Sir:  I have for some time thought it desirable that your society should erect upon the land recently purchased from the estate of Hamilton Fish a suitable building for the needs of the hospital.

Being of this opinion, I have had preliminary studies made by Mr. Robertson, as architect, which I think will be satisfactory to your Board of Governors; if not, they can easily be modified.

The architect, “Mr. Robertson,” was the esteemed Robert Henderson Robertson.  Morgan had taken it upon himself to choose the architect and lay out stipulations on the building’s construction.  His letter would go on to explain why he had every right to do so:

I assume that the cost of the building will be about $1,000,000, which sum I am prepared to donate for that purpose.  The only conditions that I make are:

First—That before the building is erected it shall be apparent that the income of the hospital, from endowment or other sources, render it in all human probability sufficient to meet expenses, after the new building shall be erected.

Second—That the plans and the carrying out of same, from a medical point of view, shall be satisfactory to Dr. James W. Markoe.  Yours very truly.  J. Pierpont Morgan.

Morgan had put Markoe fully in command of the design of the medical aspects of the structure.   The New York Times quickly published Robertson’s preliminary plans.

On January 15, 1897 the newspaper said “The proposed new hospital building will be a handsome and imposing structure of granite and pressed brick, thoroughly fireproof, ten stories in height…It will have every improvement and convenience known in modern architecture and applicable to hospital purposes.  It will have accommodations for 250 patients, and, as the patients are usually discharged in two weeks, the total capacity of the hospital will be about 6,500 a year, while the outdoor service is practically unlimited.”

Invigorated by the sudden windfall, the Governors of the Society set to work to raise additional funds.  Morgan’s stipulation was, after all, that the hospital be financially independent.  “But they seem nowise afraid of the future,” reported The New York Times.  “They expect to raise not less than $1,000,000 in a reasonable time, and are even hopeful that they may exceed that amount.”

Morgan’s patronage of the hospital was possibly a factor in its becoming a favorite money-raising event among New York’s wealthiest socialites.   On February 27, 1898 The Times wrote “One of the most important Lenten entertainments to which society people are now looking forward will take place on the afternoon and evening of Saturday, March 19 at the Waldorf-Astoria.  The Society of the Lying-In Hospital of the City of New York is to be beneficiary, and the fashionable set have come out in force to give it their patronage.”

The article listed the ladies who put their significant social heft behind the affair, including Caroline Astor, Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, Mrs. Ogden Mills, Mrs. Hermann Oelrichs, Mrs. Frederic W. Vanderbilt and other prominent names like Rhinelander, Sloane, Lorillard, Whitney, Stokes, Baylies, Dodge and Morton.

The old Fish mansion was demolished and erection of the hulking new hospital began.  Morgan’s initial $1 million donation proved insufficient.  The New-York Tribune noted that “Because of a rise in the price of structural materials, Mr. Morgan subsequently gave $500,000 additional.”



The building neared completion in August 1900 -- New-York Tribune, August 13, 1900 (copyright expired)

By August 13, 1900 the building was taking form and the New-York Tribune updated readers on the progress.  “The exterior of the main structure lacks only a few additions in the way of casements and doors to make it complete, and the gangs of men employed upon the central superstructure are busily at work on the iron frame.”

The newspaper was not especially impressed with Robertson’s design.  “The main building arrests the attention of the passer by not so much because of its architecture, which is markedly lacking in ornate features, but because it stands in such striking contrast with its immediate neighborhood.  It towers high above the adjacent dwelling houses, and its walls of gray Ohio limestone and bright red brick stand out sharply in comparison with their dingy brownstone.”

In explaining to its readers the purpose of the new building, the newspaper waded into what, by a 21^st century viewpoint, was a swamp of potentially-offensive verbiage.  “The erection of this great hospital is perhaps the logical outcome of the tremendous racial changes which have been going on in that district of the city during the last thirty or forty years.  The influx of a vast foreign element has altered what was once an exclusively residence part of the city to one occupied largely by tenement dwellers.  The increasing congestion of this kind of population naturally demanded hospitals, and the need of a great maternity hospital became most imperative.”

The hospital opened in January 1902; a stately Renaissance Revival structure surmounted by a Palladian pavilion.  Although the Tribune complained that it lacked ornamentation, Robertson creatively included sculptures of chubby babies within the spandrels, in medalions, and within the friezes.

Adorable bas reliefs of swaddled infants appear along the facade -- photo by Alice Lum

The first floor housed the offices of the doctors, the second and third floors were for “the clerical department” and accommodations for 52 nurses, while the fourth, fifth and sixth floors housed the wards.  The kitchen and laundry were on the top two floors and a solarium was on the roof.

Robertson brought the design to a dramatic climax with the Palladian pavilion -- photo by Alice Lum

The paint was barely dry before the expectant mothers filed in.  Eight months later there had been 1,278 applicants seeking ward treatment--an average of 160 per month.   In the meantime, doctors going into the field to treat the impoverished women in their homes found their jobs not always the easiest.

On August 2, 1902, just eight months after the new hospital opened, the husband of Jennie Davis rushed to get medical help as she went into labor in their apartment at No. 368 Cherry Street.    Two doctors of the Lying-In Hospital, Dr. Rose and Dr. Tailford, arrived with a visiting physician.  Word spread among the concerned neighbors that Rose and Tailford were students who were observing and helping a veteran doctor.

When the visiting physician left the woman in the care of Rose and Tailford, whom the neighbors supposed were merely students, a near riot broke out.   The New-York Tribune reported “After examining the woman, the one the neighbors thought was a physician went away on other business, leaving the supposed students in charge of the case.  Relatives and neighbors crowded in and objected to their way of treating the woman.”

Tragically, in the uproar that followed the doctors were interrupted in their treatment and Mrs. Davis died.  “The crowd grew excited and threatening, and in the excitement the woman died before the child was born,” said the newspaper.  The enraged group, now a rabble, seized the doctors and threw them down the tenement stairway.

The poorest of New York City's citizens passed through a magnificent entranceway -- photo by Alice Lum

James W. Markoe continued on as Medical Director and attending surgeon at the Lying-In Hospital.  In his will J. Pierpont Morgan bequeathed Markoe an annual income of $25,000 for life “because of his service at this hospital,” as reported in theNew-York Tribune.

On Sunday morning April 18, 1920 as services at St. George’s Protestant Episcopal Church drew to a close, Markoe was walking up the aisle with the collection plate.  Suddenly Thomas W. Simpkin, a stranger to the congregation, rose from his seat near the rear of the church and fired a bullet into the forehead of the doctor.  The shooter was described in The New York Times the following day as “a lunatic, recently escaped from an asylum.”

Within seconds the life of the celebrated surgeon, the victim of an irrational act, had been snuffed out.  His will instructed that had his wife and daughter not survived him, his entire estate was to be left to his beloved Lying-In Hospital.

Close inspection reveals infants popping up throughout the ornamentation -- photo by Alice Lum

As the years passed, John Pierpont Morgan, Jr. was concerned about the long-term stability of the hospital his father had so generously provided for.   He recruited John D. Rockefeller, Jr.; George F. Baker, Sr.; and George F. Baker, Jr. to join forces in establishing an association with New York Hospital.  Upon the subsequent opening of the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in 1932, the Lying-In Hospital moved out of the Second Avenue building.  It became the more modern-sounding Obstetrics and Gynecology Department of New York Hospital.

In 1985 the architectural firm of Beyer Blinder Belle renovated the building—already added to the National Register of Historic Places—as offices and residential spaces.   Like the New-York Tribune in 1900, the “AIA Guide to New York City” was reserved in its assessment of the design, calling it “boring until the top.”

photo by Alice Lum

The “top,” however, makes up for the “boring” and the delightful limestone babies—reminders of the building’s original purpose—are guaranteed to bring a smile.

photo by Alice Lum

 thanks to reader Alan Engler for suggesting this post

The Miraculous Survival of St. Brigid's Church -- 123 Avenue B

St. Brigid's in 2006, just as demolition commenced -- photo by David Shankbone

In 1883 James D. McCabe, Jr., in his “New York by Gaslight,” noted that “Tompkins Square constitutes the only breathing space in the terribly overcrowded tenement house districts of the eastern side of the city.”  It was to this area that the desperate Irish immigrants came, fleeing the Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1849.  The area was known as the Dry Dock District, where ships were built and repaired along the East River.  Many of the Irish immigrants were able to find employment here among the shipyards.

On the eastern edge of the Square, Irish shipwrights began constructing a Catholic church for the swelling population.  The parish was named for the Irish saint Brigid.  Saint Brigid carried the unwieldy burden of being patron saint of babies, blacksmiths, boatmen, cattle, chicken farmers, children whose parents are not married, dairymaids, dairy workers, fugitives, Ireland, mariners, midwives, nuns, poets, printing presses, scholars and travelers.

The Irish-born Patrick Charles Keely was commissioned to design the structure.  The cornerstone was laid on September 10, 1848 and construction completed 15 months later.  Keely produced a restrained Gothic Revival church with little flashy ornamentation other than the tall, lacy spires that rose above the corner towers.    Keely personally carved the Gothic five-pinnacle reredos and designed the organ case.

photo by Willens, Associated Press

 Using their shipbuilding knowledge, the carpenters fashioned the vaulted ceiling as, essentially, an upside-down ship’s hull.  The corbels supporting the roof are decorated with sculpted faces which, reportedly, honor the shipwrights who did the construction of the church.

Tall, Gothic spires originally graced the corners -- photo nycago.org

St. Brigid’s, from the start, would have money problems.   The New York Times reported that the Civil War “made a great difference in its progress out of debt.”  Following the war the shipyards which had been the chief industry in the area were plagued with labor strikes.  The John Roach shipyards were relocated to Chester, putting hundreds of men out of work.  By 1878 the parish had a debt of $72,000 and it was not until 1889 that the church building could be consecrated—even then with an outstanding debt of $32,500.

Patrick Charles Keely personally carved the wooden, five-point reredos -- photo nycago.org

Financial worries would be a constant consideration at St. Brigid’s.   Completion of the interior would take decades.  Not until the 1870s would the Bavarian stained glass windows be installed.  The stations of the cross, possibly the work of Theophile-Narciss Chauvel of Paris, were not purchased until this time, as well.   A wooden altar served for three decades before being replaced by one of beautiful carved marble and Caen stone; the work of Theiss & Janssen.

Work continued in the 1880s when the ceiling and walls were frescoed, carved ash pews from Cleveland were installed and a new Georgia pine floor was laid.  At this time the aisles were raised five inches to improve the sight-lines.

St. Brigid’s welcomed all worshipers and on April 19, 1890 the first Greek Catholic Mass in New York City was celebrated in the basement by Rev. Alexander Dzubay.  As the neighborhood changed, so did the face of the congregation.  By 1914 the neighborhood was more Italian than Irish and as the 20^th century progressed, St. Brigid’s became home to the city’s largest Hispanic congregation.

In 1962 the attractive spires were removed because of safety concerned, leaving rather stumpy unfinished towers, and the façade was slathered over with a cream-colored stucco.

In 1967 the Archdiocese designated St. Brigid’s an “experimental church” and installed a team of three priests who worked together as peers; rather than the traditional organization or a senior pastor with subordinate associates.  The pastors—Dermod McDermott, John Calhoun and Matthew Thompson—staged block parties, neighborhood clean-up projects and opened the rectory to drug addicts and troubled teens in an effort to make a meaningful connection between church and community.

A Mass was celebrated in Spanish, Puerto Rican music was added and outdoor processions, traditional in Puerto Rico, were initiated for the Stations of the Cross.    The innovations increased attendance by some; but were highly contested by others.  Older parishioners vocally objected to the new music, liturgical dancing and the absence of the traditional Catholic liturgy.

But arguments over liturgy took a back seat when, around 1992, the east wall began separating from the building.  The church hired a contractor to erect three concrete buttresses to shore up the wall; however the work was badly done and never corrected.   Then another crack on the north side began widening; presenting the possibility of collapse.

Cardinal Edward M. Egan investigated the problem for himself and, in June 2001, closed the church.

The parish began a restoration drive and little-by-little the fund grew.  Behind the scenes, however, the Archdiocese quietly filed with the City to convert St. Brigid’s Church into apartments.  The filing was never, apparently, in genuine because according to Archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling in 2007 “By this stage there was general consensus with the archdiocese that St. Brigid’s would not reopen as a church and would probably be demolished.”

In the meantime, parishioners who were kept in the dark continued to donate money in envelopes marked “My Donation to Rebuild St. Brigid.”  The fund rose to more than $100,000.  But their money would not be used.

In August of 2004 Bishop Robert Brucato visited Sunday Mass in the school cafeteria and, without explaining the cost of repairs or the safety concerns, abruptly told the people assembled that there was no longer a St. Brigid’s parish.

St. Brigid’s had now stood empty and neglected for four years.  The church estimated a restoration at nearly $7 million and ordered the donations to the “unauthorized” building fund returned.  Demolition began in 2006.  While the parishioners filed suit against the archdiocese, temporarily halting demolition, the organ, the crucifix, the Stations of the Cross, the stained glass and even the sculptured faces of the Irish shipwrights were stripped from the church.

The parishioners lost their law suit and Joseph Zwilling stated “It is still our plan for the building to come down.”   The fate of what was possibly the oldest standing Charles Keely church seemed sealed.

But then a miracle happened.

On Wednesday, May 21, 2008 The New York Daily News reported that “Historic St. Brigid’s Church in the East Village was saved from the wrecking ball Wednesday by a $20 million donation from an anonymous angel.”

Edward Cardinal Egan confirmed that the gift had been given after a “private meeting” at the cardinal’s residence.  The cardinal, in a tone significantly different than parishioners and preservationists were accustomed to, said “This magnificent gift will make it possible for St. Brigid’s Church to be fittingly restored with its significant structural problems properly addressed.”

The interior of St. Brigid's in 2011.  The pews, windows, essentially everything is gone -- photo Committee to Save St. Brigid's Church

Restoration continued at St. Brigid’s Church for years.  The entire edifice was shrouded in scaffolding and netting, to be finally resurrected in January 2013.  Whether the lost architectural treasures – the carved pews, the marble altar, the magnificent stained glass and those Irish shipwright heads—will ever be returned is questionable.

However the 1848 church so important in New York immigrant history miraculously skirted demolition.