The Church of the Covenant -- 310 E. 42d Street

photo by Alice Lum

When the six-year old Presbyterian Church of the Covenant began plans for a “country chapel” and parish house in 1871 it did not have far to look for an architect.  Josiah Cleaveland Cady had formed the architectural partnership of Cady, Berg & See the previous year.  He was also among a group of church members who had earlier established a mission Sunday school above a stable on East 40^th Street.

The original church, on Fourth Avenue, was designed by Renwick -- photo NYPL Collection

Now the church had decided to establish the Sunday school along with a chapel and parish house seven blocks north at No. 310 East 42^ndStreet.   The New York Times later reported “The church grew so rapidly and extended its mission work over such an area that it was found necessary to erect a mission chapel.  A plot of ground was purchased on East Forty-second Street, near Second Avenue, and here was built what has since been called the Covenant Chapel.”

Cady designed a charming Victorian Gothic structure of brown-red brick trimmed in limestone.  Quaint gables, diamond-paned windows and a slate tiled roof melded into a picturesque structure in the still-developing neighborhood.

photo by Alice Lum

The northward growth of the city that instigated the new chapel would, before long, cause the closing of the Church of the Covenant.  On December 17, 1894 The New York Times reported “Being inadequate to the needs of the congregation, the mother church, on Park Avenue, was torn down some time ago, and its congregation will now worship in the chapel, to which has been transferred the title Church of the  Covenant.”  Special services were held the evening before commemorating the original church cornerstone and a memorial tablet to William Curtis Noyes which were installed in the former chapel.

The Victorian Gothic interior included elaborate pierced fretwork -- http://covenantnyc.org/church_life.html

In the summer of 1897 Sunday school teacher Mrs. Ann Jacques initiated a series of ten-day outings in the country for young boys of the congregation.  She took groups of the boys to Nyack, New York, where they could get away from the crowded city and enjoy the fresh air.  The problem was that she failed to notify the boys’ parents.

The mother of Joseph McCormack rushed to the 67^thStreet police station in June saying that a “woman in black” had kidnapped her son.   After some investigation, Detectives Keating and McDonald discovered the woman in black was Ann Jacques. 

The Times explained “She went to the McCormacks and asked Joseph’s 14-year-old sister, Nellie if the boy wouldn’t like to go away.  Nellie let the boy go.  She couldn’t explain the matter to her mother, who reported to the police that the boy had been kidnapped.”  The newspaper added “Half a dozen other east-side boys are said to be likewise ‘missing’ and at Nyack.”

photo by Alice Lum

Sunday services in the Church of the Covenant were normally subdued.  But such was not the case on April 3, 1898.  On that evening services “were rudely interrupted by a sneak thief,” according to The New York Times.

Church member Joseph Miller arrived late and slipped into a rear pew.  He casually tossed his overcoat over the back of the pew and turned his attention to the service.  Earlier the sexton, Benjamin F. Davis, had noticed two young men enter the church.  His suspicions were raised when the men loitered about in the rear, without taking a seat.  Davis watched the men distrustfully.  His caution was warranted.

“As soon as Miller had become interested one of these young men seized his coat and was about to make off with it when Davis grabbed him,” reported The Times.  “There was a lively tussle in the rear of the church, several members going to the assistance of the sexton.”

When Police Officer Widder arrived Davis was still holding 21-year old William Reilly.  Unfortunately, according to the newspaper, “his confederate got away.”

As the years passed, the neighborhood around the Church of the Covenant gradually changed.  Tenements, a power plant and slaughterhouses filled the surrounding blocks.   Then in the 1920s real estate developer Fred F. French changed all that.  He built his quixotic Tudor City on the three square blocks between East 40^th to East 43^rd Streets, from First Avenue to Second.

The first residential high-rise complex in the world, the buildings reflected old English architectural styles—neo Gothic, Tudor revival, and Jacobethan.  Despite their height, the quaint design of the structures created an Old World atmosphere. 

When the Church of the Covenant (by now affiliated with the Brick Presbyterian Church on Fifth Avenue) laid plans for replacing its outdated parish house, it turned to Tudor City for inspiration.  On December 1, 1926 a meeting of congregants was held during which the planned $30,000 parish house was announced.

The Tudor-inspired Parish House melded nicely with the Gothic church -- photo by Alice Lum

The new parish house was completed the following year.  Its Tudor-inspired design with diamond-paned windows, half timbering and creative brickwork was surprisingly harmonious with the Gothic church.

In 1933 Adolph Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and his racist pronouncements raised the ire of Rev. Howard V. Yergin of the Church of the Covenant.  On April 29, 1934 Yergin denounced Hitler from the pulpit.  In what was no doubt a controversial sermon, he also attributed the blame for religious racism to Jews and Christians alike.

“I am, frankly, about as much irritated by certain leaders of the Jewish race in America as I am by Hitler,” he said.  “Both proceed on the same assumption—that the Jews are a race apart, with special attributes, either of good or evil.  I refuse to accept the contention that the Jews are now the chosen people of God, whatever they may have been at one time.  To believe that in the year 1934 any one race is chosen of God is to do violence to every concept I have of a God who is God of all the earth and of every race and individual therein.”

The Christians were not off the hook either.  “If, therefore I call upon every Christian to cease looking upon Jews just as Jews and therefore to eschew Ku Klux Klans and so forth, so also I call upon those of the Jewish race and religion to cease thinking of themselves as a people set apart and thereby entitled to special consideration.”

The following year the Church of the Covenant was the scene of a grisly accident.  Herman R. Voigtlander was a 52-year old hosiery manufacturer who lived in a one-room apartment in the Tudor City Woodstock Tower building.  Around 10:00 on the night of October 14, 1935 church sexton Max Grandel heard a crash and called police.

The responding officers discovered the pajama-clad body of Voigtlander on the roof of the church.  Detectives found that his bed had been slept in and surmised that he lost his balance while opening the casement window, falling to his death on the church roof.  

The lowered street level necessitated a new stone base, staircase and relocated entry -- Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress

In 1950 the city graded 42^nd Street, lowering it several feet.   The change necessitated a granite and limestone base and a flight of steps from the new sidewalk level.  The entry doors were repositioned at the time.

J. Cleaveland Cady’s delightful Church of the Covenant continues as a vigorous presence in the Tudor City neighborhood.  

An Unexpected Survivor -- No. 337 East 41st Street

photo by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

In 1870, four years after the official end of the Civil War, New York City was returning to normal.  It would be another three years before the Financial Panic of 1873 brought real estate development to a near halt.  For now the land near the East River which only a few decades earlier had still been sprawling country estates was being developed with speculative housing and commercial buildings.

That year the East 41^st Street block between First and Second Avenues caught the eye of two developers.  In September 1870, five months after architect John Sexton filed plans for six Italianate rowhouses along the south side of the block, developer S. S. Stevens started work on the remainder—13 houses on the north side and six on the south.  Stevens commissioned the fledgling architectural firm of Hubert & Pirsson to design his 19 homes.  Like those of Sexton, they would be Italianate in style, three stories tall over high English basements.  Faced in brownstone, they were intended for middle class families.  The homes sat back from the property line, creating generous garden areas behind handsome Italianate iron fencing.

Completed in April 1871, No. 337 East 41^st Street was owned by S. J. Lazarus, who would have spent $10,000 for the new home--about $185,000 today.  He was affiliated with the Mack Brothers furniture store at No. 1029 Third Avenue.  But the home’s status as a single-family dwelling would be short-lived.

The house had a tin-covered roof and cast metal cornice -- photo by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

By the mid-1880s it was operated as a boarding house.  In 1884 Marie E. Flandran lived her while she earned her living teaching boys far downtown in Grammar School No. 20 on Chrystie Street.  On November 5, 1888 an advertisement in The Sun offered: “To Let—Third floor, three light rooms: private house; $16; furnished hall rooms $1, $1.25.”  The rent for the somewhat spacious third floor would equate to about $378 today.

That same year one of the residents of No. 337 was operating his mail-order business from home.  An advertisement in Leslie’s touted: “Dumon’s Hair Restorer “Entirely New Discovery” Perfectly healthful and will produce luxurious growth of hair by using from one to three bottles.  Put up neatly in half pint bottles, and forwarded to any address on receipt of One Dollar, or six bottles for $5.”

Within the decade the house was returned to a single family home.  Along with Dr. Abram G. Levy here was his wife and one of three daughters—two of them had already married.  Levy was born in Boston on May 5, 1818 and spent most of his youth in the South—in Texas and Louisiana.  Educated in New Orleans, he received a medical degree but chose instead to go into journalism.

In the 1850s he moved to New York State, editing a newspaper in Port Chester.  Later he moved to New York City where he was connected with the newspaper The Mail and Bag.  The highly-literate Levy spoke seven languages fluently.

In the spring of 1897 Dr. Levy contracted pneumonia and, according to The New York Times, “a complication of ailments developed.”  He died in the house on May 2, 1897.  Two days later, at 10:00 in the morning, his funeral was held in the parlor here.

In the years following the end of World War I the far East Side neighborhoods began seeing substantial change.  In 1920 Elisabeth Marbury hired architect Mott Schmidt to transform a Victorian rowhouse at No. 13 Sutton Place into a Georgian mansion—the first domino to drop in what would become one of Manhattan’s most exclusive residential enclaves.  Elsewhere in the area blocks of old houses were upgraded with new facades and modern apartment buildings replaced outmoded structures.  By 1925 the area around No. 337 East 41^stStreet was heavily industrial along the river.  The French  Company embarked on an early and ambitious urban renewal project on December 18, 1925—the largest housing project ever attempted in Midtown Manhattan.

Within one month the firm purchased more than 100 buildings that covered five acres, spending $7.5 million.  Before long the French Company owned nearly all of the property between East 40^th and 44^th Streets between First and Second Avenues—a sweeping area that did not include No. 337 East 41^st.

Construction on Fred F. French’s “human residential enclave” began in 1927.  He envisioned “tulip gardens, small golf courses, and private parks,” intended for the middle class.  Within five years nine large apartment houses and a hotel were completed—all designed in a charming Tudor Revival style.

While construction progressed, Alexis T. Wilstrup was living in the anachronistic brownstone at No. 337 East 41^st Street.   The 64-year old died in July 1930 having worked for The New York Times as a clerk for 23 years.

The fate of the stubborn survivor was in doubt on May 8, 1985 when real-estate moguls Harry B. Helmsley and Alvin Schwartz sold off their vast holdings in Tudor City.  Among the structures sold were six of the 13 large apartment buildings, two parks and No. 337 East 41^st Street.

Nestling against a large apartment building and abutting a park, the unlikely relic is a single family home again -- photo by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

Perhaps because of its relatively small footprint—allowing little option for development—the little house endured.  In 1990 it was converted to a single family residence once again.  Although the brownstone has been painted grey, the exterior is virtually untouched.  The Italianate fencing, the railings of the stoop and even the Victorian double entrance doors survive—the last remaining sliver of a time when this block of East 41^st Street bustled with middle-class families.