The Lost Mineral Water Pavilion of Central Park

As the Civil War was coming to an end, Calvert Vaux and his assistant architect Jacob Wrey Mould began working on designs for a Mineral Water Pavilion at the northwest edge of the Sheep Meadow. The pavilion had been petitioned by the owner of a mineral water company, Carl H. Schultz. New Yorkers still remembered the cholera epidemic of 1832 that took the lives of 3,515 citizens. Not only were mineral waters considered healthful, but a “spa” for dispensing the waters would attract visitors.

The Board of Health bulked at the idea, putting a temporary halt to the plans pending their investigation. Reaction from the medical community was swift. The New York Times reported on May 29, 1866 that “…we find advancing to the attack…all the principal professors and doctors of the City, in one solid phalanx, united and unbroken.” Indeed Drs. Schultz and Warker, in a letter to The Times, berated the Board.

“The recent action of the Board of Health in regard to the introduction of our artificial spring waters in the Park has, no doubt, greatly surprised the medical faculty of this City, who have so largely endorsed these waters as the most effective and simple means of keeping the digestive organs in a healthful condition, and as the most natural remedies in many affections of the digestive apparatus,” they wrote.

“Is it imaginable,” they asked, “that seltzers-water, the chief remedy in Asiatic cholera, the very milk of our mother earth, as it has been called by a distinguished writer, should be decreed as injurious in cholera times?”

Photo New York City Dept. of Parks



The Board of Health, properly scolded, recanted their objections and the Mineral Water Pavilion went forward. Costing approximately $30,000, it was a Moorish, or “Saracenic,” fantasy. The tiered Oriental-style roof, ornately and colorfully patterned, sat above a colorful one-story wooden building with slender,  columns and arched windows.

photo NYPL Collection

It was an immediate success. In July of 1869 The Times noted that “Thousands of people visit the springs early in the morning for the purpose of drinking the waters, and for recreation.” Residents nearby petitioned the Park Commissioners to have musical entertainment during the morning hours when most people took the water, the cost of which would be absorbed by Schultz.



The petition was approved and “The Schultz Band” began their recitals every morning during the summer months from 6:00 am through 8:00 am. According to contemporary reports the “spa,” as it was sometimes referred to, was especially popular with moneyed German Jewish immigrants.



Carl Schultz died in 1977 and Joseph Hoblitz took over the operation. By the 1920s however, the mineral springs were gone and Vaux and Mould’s exotic little building was a soft drink and candy shop.

photo NYPL Collection

As with so many treasures of Central Park, the mid-20th Century was unkind to the Pavilion and in 1957 it was demolished. One of Central Park’s most delightful architectural gems was lost forever.

The 1851 Central Park Arsenal

In 1846 the State of New York authorized the construction of a new munitions depot for New York City’s National Guard. A site was chosen in the countryside far to the north where it was felt that troops could be easily deployed to either shoreline or south to the city. Architect Martin E. Thompson designed the structure, a crenellated fortress with half-octagonal towers on either corners.

Construction began in 1847 and was completed four years later. Based on a medieval gatehouse it was built of grey English bond brick. 

As later reported in The New York Times, “…the second floor was reached by iron stairs built on the outside. On the balcony at which the two stairways met was the coat-of-arms of the State of New York in wrought iron and the windows on either side were made narrow and thin like those of a jail. Why New York State built its arsenal of nothing more substantial than brick with its access to it by stairways on the outside where a single cannon shot would destroy them and cut off all access to or egress from the building is one of the great mysteries of New York.”

State Controller Millard Fillmore – later to become the 13th President of the United States – oversaw the funding of the $30,000 project.

The new Arsenal, however, sat disruptively within the huge plot that New York City was planning to turn into Central Park. Two years after the building's completion in 1851, the City began a 3-year appropriation of the land it needed. In 1857 it purchased the Armory from the State for $275,000, emptied it of the munitions and arms, and established the administrative functions of the planned park within it.

As Calvert Vaux’s and Jacob Mould’s fanciful and colorful buildings and terraces began taking shape on paper, many felt that the medieval and militaristic-looking Armory did not fit in. In 1859 George Templeton Strong, never one to hold back his opinion, called it the "hideous State Arsenal Building," and hinting at civic-minded arson hoped "this eyesore” would “soon be destroyed by accidental fire."

Two years before Strong was voicing his disgust, the 11th Precinct Police Station House had already been established in the Armory. And in 1859 the police began sharing its space with the new Central Park “Menagerie.” Cages were erected outside as well as in the basement and exotic animals were donated by philanthropists like August Belmont and showman P. T. Barnum.

James D. McCabe Jr wrote “On the east side of the Park…is an old building which somewhat resembles the Cadet barracks at West Point. In the lower stories and in several buildings around it is a fine collection of animals, birds, and reptiles, constituting the Menagerie of the Park. In the winter the collection is greatly enlarged by numerous animals and birds which are sent here for safe keeping by traveling shows which go into quarters in New York during the cold season. This is a favorite resort with visitors, especially with children, and is always crowded. “

The animals and the police were further crowded when, at the outbreak of the Civil War, the Arsenal was pressed into military service again. The militia was housed here in improvised barracks while awaiting deployment to the front. The grassy area in front of the building became “the parade ground of the scores of regiments passing through the city,” and returning soldiers were quartered here before returning home.

Immediately after the War, the building found yet more new uses. In 1869, in addition to the menagerie, it housed a new museum which would eventually become the American Museum of Natural History. Here esteemed British paleontologist B. Waterhouse Hawkins labored, reconstructing the skeletons of dinosaurs in a specially constructed workroom. An Gallery of Art was established on the first floor that same year and the Municipal Weather Bureau’s instruments were installed on the roof.

The Arsenal was bustling with activity.

In 1870 Jacob Wrey Mould was brought in to redesign the interiors and a year later, faced with numerous complaints about the stench and “great insecurity and danger,” the beloved menagerie was moved out.

Always a point of visual controversy the Arsenal was threatened again in 1912 when Henry Clay Frick proposed to dismantle the old 1877 Lenox Library, now vacant with the opening of the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue, and re-erect it on the site of the Arsenal. Frick’s gift was turned down, an act Mayor William J. Gaynor viewed as an insult to Frick and announced that he was “determined” to demolish the Arsenal, calling it “unsanitary and unfit.” The New York Times chimed in, siding with the Mayor and labeling it “an eyesore, fetid with the smell of the stables and the nearby menagerie” and saying “the old structure was never a thing of beauty, even in its palmiest days.”

Although the building survived the threat, the Parks Department offices left the Arsenal in 1914, moving to the new Municipal Building downtown. The building sat neglected and essentially empty, other than the weather instruments on the roof. In 1916 the Department considered razing the building, although nothing was done. Instead it sat for nearly a decade decaying.

In 1922 The New York Times, which had once so vigorously condemned the Armory, lamented “New York does not destroy its old monuments, it ignores them. Such has been the fate of one of the oldest structures devoted to public uses in the territory north of Fifty-ninth Street – the Armory in Central Park.

“...the first State arsenal erected to safeguard the greatest port in the world and the greatest city in America stands facing palatial and opulent upper Fifth Avenue, dilapidated and deserted, with broken windows, cracked lintels, a rickety iron staircase, uneven board floors and more holes in the roof than there are spots on the skin of the leopard in a cage near by…while 'The Arsenal!' is a sinister monument to the neglect of those charged with its maintenance and preservation.”

A contrite City appropriated $75,000 to restore the Arsenal, converting much of the interior space for Parks Department offices. New turrets and a clock were constructed, and basement storage areas were added. A secret passage under the building was discovered which was possibly intended for the covert movement of munitions.

A decade later Commissioner Robert Moses supervised yet another complete conversion of the structure installing his office and command center here. Sandblasting removed decades of paint from the brick and the military-themed details – the entrance door’s cannon balls and drums, and the cast iron rifle stair balusters – were added. WPA artist Allen Saalburg adorned the interior walls with historically-themed murals.


photo Andrew Russeth

The often-maligned Armory was declared a New York City Landmark in 1967.

In 2008 the department completed a $5 million structural restoration focused, mainly, on water leaks.

Since the early 1980s much of the interior of the Arsenal has been devoted to gallery and space for public forums. Fine art and photography shows are exhibited here throughout the year with preference going to those highlighting the environment, urban issues and parks history.

photo New York Parks Department

historic photos from the NYPL Collection

Jacob Mould's 1871 City Hall Park Fountain

Photo wirednewyork.com

After completion of the elegant City Hall building in 1812, the large triangle of land in front of it was used only partially as a public park. The city's first art museum, a circular building called The Rotunda was built here six years later and various other structures came and went.


With the opening of the Croton Aqueduct in 1842 that brought the city’s water supply from upstate, a large fountain was installed in the park which spewed water 50 feet in the air. It was here that public meetings concerning the outbreak of the Mexican American War in 1846 were held, where Civil War recruitment drives were administered in 1862, and where barracks housed Civil War troops waiting to march off.

After the war, in 1867, the city erected a post office on the southern tip and razed the Rotunda in 1870. The next year Jacob Mould was commissioned to design a new fountain. Mould, who would become chief architect of New York City Parks, was busy at the time co-designing elements of Central Park with Calvert Vaux.

His creation, which replaced the original 1842 fountain, was a Victorian extravaganza worthy of its position in front of City Hall. A granite and bronze central column sat within a great 30-foot square granite basin. The main basin spilled into four semi-circular pools at its sides. Four ornate gas-lit “candelabra” anchored the corners and a gilt finials surmounted both the column and the lamps.

NYPL Collection

The park and Mould’s fountain were an enticement to tourists and New Yorkers alike. Throughout the 1870s people crowded into the park for free concerts.

After World War I, however, civic taste turned from ornate Victorian designs to heroic allegorical monuments. Jacob Mould’s fountain was disassembled in 1920 and shipped to Crotona Park in the Bronx. Two years later an extremely controversial fountain by Frederick William MacMonnies was installed. The sculptural grouping, called Civic Virtue, depicted a muscular, nude male holding a sword, stepping over the prone figures of two females.  The grouping was little admired by female New Yorkers.

Amid the protests, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia had the fountain dismantled and moved to Queens. City Hall Park was without a fountain until 1972 when a new fountain, a gift of philanthropist George T. Delacorte, was installed.

During his second administration, Mayor Rudolph Guiliani became disenchanted with the rag-tag condition of City Hall Park and initiated an all-out renovation and restoration. In 1999 the project, which would cost nearly $35 million, was underway. Pavement, which by now covered the park, was ripped up and grass and gardens reintroduced. The heavy, cast iron fence was restored and replicated where necessary and plans were made for the Jacob Mould fountain to come home.

What Conservations Solutions, Inc., the firm hired to restore the fountain, found when they inspected it was disheartening at best. The fountain’s years in the Bronx had not been kind. All of the bronze elements had been stolen for their scrap value. Where original carved capstones and copingstones had been taken or lost, blank gray stone blocks had been used as replacements.

When vandals sprayed graffiti on the fountain, it had been covered over by layer after layer of white paint. Carefully, Conservations Solutions removed the white paint and the underlying graffiti without damaging the original surviving finishes. All missing granite, bronze and ceramic elements were reproduced using Mould’s original sketches and photographs. Not only were the fountain operations restored to the 1871 plans; the restored lamps burn gas again as they did during those summer concerts 140 years ago.

In 2000, the fountain restoration received the award of Best Park Restoration from the New York City Department of Parks.

The Heart of Central Park -- The Terrace

In 1857 the Central Park was laid out—hundreds of acres that would be devoted to public recreation and relief from the crowded urban streets.  The land chosen was so far north of the established city that one magazine writer scoffed “we might as well establish a park in the middle of the Desert of Sahara as to fence in this wilderness.”  Despite nay-sayers, Calvert Vaux and Frederick Olmsted’s ambitious project went forward.

Five years later excavation, construction, and plantings were well underway.  At the time ladies and gentlemen spent many weekend hours in the Victorian pastime promenading.  Following church services on Sundays, Fifth Avenue was crowded with well-dressed society people; as was Union Square and the upper level of the Croton Reservoir.  The necessity of a promenade did not escape Vaux and Olmsted.

Prominent to the architects’ plan was The Mall—a wide gravel boulevard where wealthy New Yorkers could show off their finery.  The Mall would terminate at its northern end with The Terrace, a two-level architectural jaw-dropper that harkened to the grand staircases of Europe’s largest cities and grand palaces.  Broad flights of two majestic staircases led down to The Esplanade where a fountain cooled the summer air.  Calvert Vaux, in describing The Mall and Terrace to the Park Commissioners in 1862 said “In the general design for the Park the Mall may be considered, with its accessories, an open air hall of reception for dress promenade.”

Calvert Vaux submitted his plan for the Terrace and Esplanade (or Lower Terrace) to the Commissioners in 1862 -- Annual Report of Commissioners of the Central Park (copyright expired)

The Annual Report of the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park reported in 1863 that the Terrace was essentially completed.  But, “a portion of the connected ornamental work of the Terrace structure remains to be done.  Considerable progress has been made with this work during the last two years.”

That the “ornamental work” was not yet completed was understandable.  The ceiling and flooring of the passageway, or Arcade, below the Terrace was covered in Minton tiles—the first attempt at using the substantial material for a ceiling.  Many of the intricate Terrace carvings conceived by Jacob Wrey Mould, Calvert Vaux’s brilliant co-designer who is often overlooked, involved full-relief figures sculpted in deep recesses.

From the Mall, visitors could take the Minton-tiled Arcade to the Esplanade.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

On  July 25, 1863 The New York Times brought readers up to date on the progress.  “The Mall is a beautiful walk, about three-eighths of a mile in length, shaded with elms and flanked with velvety sward of the brightest green.  At the end of the Mall is the Terrace, or open air place of recreation, which is constructed with considerable architectural ornamentation, having broad flights of stairs leading to a noble esplanade.  There are pedestals at the head and foot of each stairway, intended for various pieces of statuary, and vases of living flowers, while the vamps and balustrades of the staircase are embellished with sculptured flowers, fruits, birds and other objects, illustrative of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.  In the centre of the esplanade a fountain is in course of construction and its effect will enhance the attractions of the place.”

Miller’s  Stanger’s Guide for the City of New York in 1866 urged tourists to visit The Terrace, saying it “is the principal architectural structure.  This terminates the Mall on the north; below it is the esplanade surrounding the main fountain.  The visitor will be well repaid by the examination of the design and execution of the detail of the stone work of the terrace.”

In 1871 the fountain received its centerpiece—the masterful bronze statue “The Angel of Water.”  The New York Times noted on July 19, 1871 that “The estimated cost of the fountain is $150,000.”  That figure would amount to about $2.75 million today.

A nanny holds an infant (left) as well-dressed Victorians climb the Terrace steps.  At right is seen the fountain statue, installed just a year before this view.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

It was just one more costly expenditure that did not escape the notice of the New York press.  Ten days later The Times reported that the city had paid out, to date, $7,344 per acre for the 862-acre project.  And although the newspaper jibed “Truly we must change the old nursery rhyme, to read: Mary, Mary, quite contrary,/How does your garden grow?/With golden shells and silver bells/And dollars, all of a row,” it was quick to point out what New Yorkers got for their money.  The Times said that the Mall was now complete “with an esplanade of cut stone, the like of which is not in the country, and its superior in few others.”

photo by Alice Lum

On the first beautiful Sunday in spring in 1872, Manhattan’s wealthy thronged to the streets.  On April 15 The New York Times remarked “Church in the morning, and a promenade in the Central Park and on Fifth-avenue in the afternoon, was the programme of many.”  The newspaper said that in the afternoon a wind whipped up, “But this was not much of a drawback to the tens of thousands who in the afternoon swarmed about the Central Park in a condition of the purest happiness.  In every direction one saw happy groups:  mothers breathing the pure, pleasant air with the brightening eyes and kindling cheeks, fathers holding young children by the hand, and accommodating their steps to the uncertain toddling of their young ones, youthful sweethearts locked arm in arm, as happy as could be, proud of their fine Sunday clothes, proud of each other, and reveling in the glories of the esplanade and the mall, young girls going in couples, looking arch and pretty, whispering comments upon the Spring toilets of their acquaintances, and giggling somewhat, as young girls will do.”

When James Dabney McCabe, Jr. wrote about the Mall and Terrace in 1882, he noted the use of the Arcade underneath.  “This magnificent apartment is used as an ice cream saloon.”   He called The Terrace, “one of the most imposing structures in the grounds,” saying it was “ornamented with exquisite carvings of birds, animals, fruits, etc., and beautiful tracery, cut in the soft stone work.  On the east and west sides of the stairways, the adjoining grounds are lavishly ornamented with flowers, and slope gracefully from the Terrace to the Lake.”

The imposing staircases flank the arched entrance to the Arcade in this shot taken in 1894 -- from the collection of the New York Public Library

By the turn of the century the terms “terrace” and “esplanade” had become blurred and, as today, were often used interchangeably regarding the Central Park structures.  As Victorian tastes gave way to 20^th century fashion, Jacob Wrey’s glorious Terrace was less-than-appreciated by many.  On December 16, 1906 The Times wrote “The Esplanade is the most pretentious architectural feature of the Park.  It consists of a Renaissance staircase gracefully tapering off into a Byzantine terrace, with Roman effects around the edges and Doric suggestions in the shrubbery, all leading up to a Rococo replica of a lake in the foreground or background, according to which way it strikes you.  The Mall is lined with statues and busts, intended, it is rumored, to beautify it.  I cannot see where people got that idea.  The majority of the statues do not bear out the supposition.  In fact, the busts of Burns and Scott ought to go to a hospital.”

Knickered boys are among the visitors to the highly-carved Terrace steps around 1890 -- photograph by John S. Johnston, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWN82KDO&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

Three years later The Terrace would suffer more than critical abuse.  Park Commissioner Henry Smith told reporters on August 18, 1909 that “sometime after dusk on Saturday evening a gang of vandals, supposed to have been boys returning from a baseball game, battered and disfigured the southeastern portion of the ornamental sandstone wall around the esplanade in Central Park.”

The boys destroyed 25 linear feet of the filigree carvings, punched holes through the foot-and-a-half thick wall, and knocked animal heads and posts off with their baseball bats.  The frustrated Commissioner said “I do not know what I can do to stop such outrageous destruction of property.  I have too few police, and they have their hands full.”

 

A stereoscope view captured the beauty of the Upper Terrace. (copyright expired)

It would not be the last of the inexcusable vandalism of Mould’s magnificent work.  The second half of the 20^th century was a dark time in Central Park.  The City’s financial crisis resulted in overgrown lawns, and trash-littered and algae-clogged ponds.  The Park, once crowded with visitors dressed in their finest, was avoided by most New Yorkers as muggers, drug dealers and other criminal elements took it over.

Incredible post carvings include a sunrise with high-relief flowers and the lamp of knowledge above an opened book -- photos by Alice Lum

The Terrace became the target for vandals who broke off the heads of carved birds and figures, smashed architectural elements, and sprayed graffiti across the walls.  In 1985 the Central Park Conservancy initiated a $4.5 million restoration.  E. Timothy Marshall, chief of construction for Central Park, said the Terrace was in an “advanced state of decay.  The landscape was barren, slopes were devoid of grass, erosion had caused the land to push onto the lower terrace.  Carvings were missing, there were decapitated and de-winged birds.”

The grand sweeping staircases were torn out and reset.  Historic photographs and drawings of the carvings were studied for replacement elements.  Sculptors with the skills to reproduce the mid-Victorian carvings were found and they painstakingly crafted animal heads, stone twigs and other missing pieces.

A witch (above) and a rooster both lost their heads to vandals.  Painstaking restoration brought the sculptures back -- photos by Alice Lum

In May 1987 the Terrace was once again opened.  Nearly three decades later it is, as it was upon its completion in 1864, the heart of Central Park.

Despite the restoration, the soft stone of the Terrace shows the abuse of weather and vandals -- photo by Alice Lum

Bethesda Fountain, Central Park -- The Angel of Water

photo NYPL Collection

With 29 sculptures in Central Park today, it is difficult to imagine that only one was included in Frederick Law Olmsted's and Calvert Vaux's 1858 Greensward Plan for Central Park.  They envisioned an open air "hall of reception" that would be the centerpiece of the park.  The Water Terrace, as they called it, would include a dramatic overlook of the lake with two grand stone staircases that descended to a fountain topped by a winged bronze sculpture.

The magnificent terrace was begun in 1859, often considered Vaux's masterpiece.  Richly carved panels by Jacob Wrey Mould depicting birds and floral motifs compliment the natural surroundings.  But the focal point would be the spectacular fountain below.

It was to be a celebration of the 1842 opening of the Croton Aquaduct that brought pure drinking water from Westchester in the north, helping to end years of epidemics such as cholera and yellow fever.  While Vaux designed the base and Mould sculpted the details, including the four 4-foot cherubs representing Temperance, Purity, Health and Peace, the commission for the main sculpture was awarded to Emma Stebbins -- the first woman to receive a major artwork commission from the City.

Stebbins' resulting neoclassical angel symbolizes the healing properties of the fresh water of the Croton Reservoir.  She holds a lily, a sign of purity, in one hand while blessing the waters below with the other.  From her studio in Rome, Stebbins began work on the sculpture in  in 1861, just as the Civil War was breaking out in America and slowing construction on the terrace.  Cast in Munich, it was finished six years later.

The fountain was not unveiled until the Park's official opening in 1873.  The brochure that day quoted the Gospel of St. John "Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called  ... Bethesda ...  whoever then first after the troubling of the waters stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had."

Photo Ahodges7

Thereafter The Water Terrace was known as "Bethesda Terrace," and The Angel of Water became "Bethesda Fountain."

The fountain, along with Trevi in Rome, is one of the most recognized and famous in the world.  It has appeared in scores of movies and in the 1997 Fools Rush In, Alex Whitman played by Matthew Perry refers to the fountain as the place where all of New York passes by.

NYPL Collection

Like much of Central Park, the Terrace and the fountain slid into disrepair and neglect in the 1970s when vandals attacked the stone carvings and the underpass was used for drug dealings.  The fountain remained dry for nearly 20 years.

Between 1980 and 1981 the Central Park Conservancy initiated a complete restoration -- the stonework was disassembled, cleaned, patched and replaced by sculptors according to the original plans.  The fountain was cleaned, restored and sealed.  It is now washed and waxed by bronze specialists every year.

The Angel of Water once again blesses the flowing waters from the fountain at her feet and Bethesda Terrace looks essentially as it did on dedication day in 1873.

Belvedere Castle - Central Park

Deep inside Central Park, nearly hidden by the dense woods of The Ramble, Belvedere Castle sits high atop Vista Rock.  A fantasy built as much for its visual impact as its functionality as a scenic overlook, it is one of the most romantic spots in the Park.

The lofty site -- the second highest in the Park -- provided a perfect location for the type of ornamental structure Victorian park-goers so loved as well as a spot to take in the beautiful views of the natural surroundings.  Designed in 1865 by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould, they described it as a "folly," or fantasy structure.  Combining Romanesque and Gothic architectural styles they created a sprawling fairytale complex of towers, pavilions and terraces.  Manhattan schist, excavated from projects going on elsewhere in the Park, provided the building material along with gray granite.  The native stone makes the Castle seem to sprout directly from the bedrock on which it sits.

The picturesque spot was a favorite among 19th Century visitors to the Park.  Around 1900, however, lack of maintenance forced the removal of Vaux's whimsical, multi-colored wooden pavilions.  A meteorological observatory was installed in the Castle that in 1912 was run by the United States Weather Bureau.  That intrusion by the weather center, however, had a positive effect in that the instruments inside required that the Castle be maintained.

That all ended in the 1960s when the Observatory was transplanted to Rockefeller Center.  Belvedere Castle was locked up and essentially abandoned.  Like so many other treasured points in the Park, it became a target of vandalism and decay.  But after two decades of deterioration and neglect,the Central Park Conservancy gave it a total restoration -- even reconstructing the painted wooden loggia using Vaux's original plans.

The Henry Luce Nature Observatory is now esconced in the Castle, offering children displays and presentations on natural life and how naturalists investigate and discover.  Budding scientists may sign out field kits that include maps, notepads, binoculars and other items needed to study the environment in the Park.

A consistent subject for photo-snappers in the Park, Belvedere Castle also served as the exterior of Sesame Street's Count von Count's home!  Today, a century and a half after they designed it, Vaux's and Mould's intentions are still being met -- a romantic folly in the center of the Park that delights the eye and provides a spot to daydream.

Belvedere Castle is located in the center of the Park, around 79th Street.

The Lost "Church of the Holy Zebra," Mould's Unitarian All Soul's Church

The Unitarian Church of All Souls in 1893 -- (from "A Loiterer in New York," author's collection)

Jacob Wrey Mould had been in the United States only a year in 1853 when he was consulted by Moses H. Grinnell regarding plans for a new Unitarian Church of All Souls. The church, under the strong guidance of Rev. Dr. Henry Whitney Bellows, had been searching for an adequate design.  When architect C. F. Anderson presented his plans, Grinnell, the president of the trustees, was less than impressed.

Although the trustees had approved Anderson’s design, they were vetoed by Grinnell.

Mould had been hard at work designing decorative elements for the Crystal Palace Exhibition in Bryant Park. His vibrant, colorful work was novel to New Yorkers and, for some, would prove over-the-top.

Three months later when, on July 8, 1853, his plans were exhibited to the board of trustees Grinnell convinced a wary Bellows to accept them. Bellows would remark that Grinnell was “bewitched by the architect.”

Accustomed to comfortable Gothic Revival and Romanesque church designs, the congregation and the public at large was taken aback by Mould’s unconventional plan. As Helen W. Henderson explained in her 1917 “A Loiterer in New York,” “This was in the year 1854, 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.”

Built on the southeast corner of Fourth Avenue and 20th Street it was completed in 1855. Although contemporary critics termed the style “Byzantine,” it was actually Italian Romanesque, modeled loosely on the 14th Century Basilica di San Giovanni Battista. In fact, the church would proudly display for decades “elaborate drawings of both San Gio Battista and All Souls,” according to Henderson, to demonstrate the similarities.


stereopticon view of All Souls around 1869 - NYPL Collection

With his design, Mould had indeed stepped out of the box. By using alternating courses of deep red Philadelphia brick and beige-yellow Italian Caen stone he created a striped overall effect which, according to the “Oxford Dictionary of Architecture and Landscaping,” “introduced structural polychromy to the USA.”
With its striking central dome, it was by far a building not to be overlooked. Dedicated on Christmas Day of 1855, Dr. Bellows spoke of it as “a building in which mean economy, superficial show, worldly artifice and fraud, should not enter—a building religious in its structure, from cornerstone to dome; and if a consummate skill, an unfailing taste, an unsparing devotion, a self-possession which neither ridicule nor blame could disturb, and a zeal which neither sickness nor pain could impair—if these deserve fame, then indeed the modest architect of this Christian temple has achieved it.”

Critics, however, were quick to react. It was called by one, “the most unfortunate ecclesiastical edifice ever to be erected not only in New York, but anywhere else in the world for that matter.” The congregation, who felt they now owned a “white elephant,” according to Henderson, was even more shocked when it was revealed that Mould had gone $48,000 over budget.

It was Grinnell who helped relieve the financial crisis from his own pocket; however the lofty campanile the architect had originally intended, matching the one at the Basilica, would never be built.

Bellow’s daughter, years later, would remember that she “found the church handsome and unique, though it excited much derisive comment and received many nicknames.” Among those irreverent nicknames, the two that quickly gained popularity were The Church of the Holy Zebra and the Beefsteak Church.

Dr. Bellows died in 1882 and four years later a bronze memorial table with a life-sized relief of the minister by Augustus Saint-Gaudens was unveiled in the sanctuary.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens' life sized bronze memorial of Dr. Bellows -- (from "A Loiterer in New York," author's collection)

By the turn of the century New Yorkers had grown accustomed to the exotic architecture of All Souls. When, in 1913, rumors spread that the congregation would possibly sell the valuable property, now surrounded by modern lofts and wholesale businesses, The New York Times lamented, “When the church does go, the city will lose one of the most remarkable architectural creations ever placed upon Manhattan Island. It was built in 1855, in the Byzantine style of architecture, and with its sharply definite lines of red brick and white caen stone, has often been called the zebra striped church.” Later the book “Dr. Bellows and All Souls Church” remarked that “architecturally [it] is of exceptional interest.”
The building, however, was in trouble. In 1917 Henderson wrote that “All Souls’ Church looks, on the week-day, neglected and shabby. Its stone work is scaling off, its garden is overgrown, and its gates padlocked and rusty.”

Early in 1929 the congregation sold the property to a developer for $475,000. The church sat empty and neglected for two years before being destroyed by a fire on August 23, 1931. As The Times had predicted, New York lost “one of the most remarkable architectural creations ever placed upon Manhattan Island.” Jacob Wrey Mould’s atypical and wonderful Church of the Holy Zebra was lost forever.

copyrights for photos from "A Loiterer in New York" have expired