USA > New York > New York City > Annals of St. Michael's ; being the history of St. Michael's Protestant Episcopal Church, New York, for one hundred years 1807-1907 ; > Part 13
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Early in the following year, 1892, the old church, which had been moved back and which continued to be used for services during the construction of the new building was finally torn down. A beautiful little church it had been, contributing during the latter years a little touch of country quiet and homeliness amid the turmoil of the great city. Those who had worshipped there parted with it with deep regret. Dr. Peters ex- pressed their sentiments in the last annual sermon which he preached in the old building, October 11, 1891 :
For one, I leave it with regret. At every service, how- ever seemingly solitary, a crowd of witnesses is around me and when most alone I am in the fullest company of those
RT. REV. H. C. POTTER, D. D., D.C.L. Consecrator of Third Church, Dec. 15, 1891
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who once were here in body and now sing the eternal praise in the mansions of the departed. They never knew the house we are now preparing, and cannot be summoned thither. I speak to them a reluctant farewell upon the abandonment of this church, in which, for thirty-seven years of my ministry, I and they have worshipped.
Abundant memories will, in due time, cluster around that larger and more enduring building into which we are soon to enter. You who may go there young will come back to it when you are old, and that in which you at first delight, because it is so new and fresh and beautiful in its wood and stone, will be dearer to you for its cherished human ties severed and yet immortal.
It is some consolation to the older worshippers here to consider that we shall not, in hastening to enter the new church, altogether throw away the past. Buried genera- tions will sleep beneath our feet. Some memorials in the former house will serve a good and double purpose in the latter, useful still, and yet connecting us with souls gone before. Storied windows will bring back the dead among the living. Tablet and inscription and consecrated gifts will be tokens that we have come not to a birth but to a resurrection. That which was will be and that which is was.
Although three score years and ten when the new church was consecrated, Dr. Peters took up the work of organizing the parish to meet its new conditions almost with the zest and vigor of youth. In the year the church was consecrated he was elected to the Stand- ing Committee of the Diocese and the following year he was chosen Archdeacon of New York. These new burdens also he took up with the cheerfulness and hopefulness of perpetual youth. In the year of the consecration of the church, his son, Rev. John P. Peters, had been called to be his assistant with right of suc- cession, and to him and the Rev. George S. Pratt, who
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had become assistant in 1889, were assigned a consider- able portion of the preaching and parochial visitation, Dr. Peters reserving, however, enough of that work to occupy the time and strength of one ordinary man, besides his missionary and benevolent enterprises.
With the construction of the new church, the parish entered in more ways than one upon a new phase of its existence. The Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum and the Shepherd's and Children's Fold, the children from which had so long attended St. Michael's, were now removed to a distance from the city. The church had ceased to be an institutional home. As the city built up more and more about it, it was to be its obliga- tion to make itself the church home of the new neigh- borhood and to minister to the needs of a new popu- lation. To enable it to do so the Vestry had leased from Dr. Peters the two wooden buildings, Lyceum Hall, which faced on 99th Street, and the old tavern behind it, the present rectory, to serve for a temporary parish house. In October 1892, in an article contributed to the Mission News of the Archdeaconry, Dr. Peters thus describes the organization of the parish at that time :
The young boys are in a Guild, with two divisions, each meeting one week-day afternoon. The older boys are St. Andrew's Cadets, and have a room of their own. The young men form a chapter of St. Andrew's Brotherhood, with two rooms which they have furnished and also fitted up with a library. The young men of St. Andrew's are ushers in the church and also take up the night services as especially their own, besides distributing cards of invitation throughout the whole neighborhood. The little girls are in St. Faith's Guild, meeting of a week-day afternoon during the autumn, winter and spring. A Sewing School for girls is held weekly on Saturday morning from November to
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Easter. Forty-five young girls compose St. Agnes's Guild, have a room of their own, and assist on the Altar Committee and in the afternoon Sunday-school.
The next in order is the Girls' Friendly Society, having a room of its own, and meeting in sections for work, exercise, or recreation every week-day evening. The Parish Aid Society, composed of young ladies of the congregation, col- lects for the furnishing of the church and fosters friendly relations among the young connected with the parish. Another association of ladies is formed to visit from house to house, attending to the spiritual welfare of those whom they thus reach. An Industrial Society meets one afternoon of each week from November to Easter, making garments for the poor and for public institutions, and during Lent, in connection with the Woman's Missionary Society, filling a box for the family of some clergyman with insufficient salary. The Altar Guild is composed of ladies who take charge of the altars, with their decorations, and everything connected with the chancel of both the church and the Chapel of the Angels. St. Cecilia's Guild, composed of 42 members, replaces the regular choir at the fifth service on Sunday evening. It is composed of men and women, is vested, and aims successfully to sing with, and not for the congregation. St. Michael's Branch of the Church Periodical Club, with II members and 26 contributors, distributed last year about 2000 periodicals and papers. The Woman's Missionary Society, of general membership, holds regular meetings in one of the parish houses and collects for mission work under the General Missionary Society.
There is besides in the parish buildings St. Michael's Station of the Penny Provident Fund, counting in the year closing August 31st, 200 depositors.
A clinic, for free consultation by the poor, is held in a room provided for the purpose by the vestry, and is at- tended in the afternoon of each week day by physicians of the West Side, who freely give their time and attention to these charitable labors.
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Dr. Peters had not expected, when he entered the new building, that it would be given him to work there many years. He had often said to his son that it would fall on him to beautify the church, to build the parish house for which he had planned, and to develop the parish along the new lines which the new conditions required.
It was vouchsafed to him to celebrate one interesting festival in the new church, the Jubilee of the commence- ment of his official relation to St. Michael's Church. While he had really commenced his work, at St. Mary's, in 1841 it was not until 1842 that he was offi- cially appointed a lay reader. To commemorate this event the congregation placed in the church in Decem- ber of 1892 a marble font the inscription on which records its occasion. In the same year one of the vestrymen on whom Dr. Peters had depended in the years of transition and who, with his family, had ren- dered valuable assistance in the parochial and mis- sionary work of the church, Charles H. Kitchnel, passed away.
Dr. Peters started out on a Saturday in August, 1893, in a characteristic manner; going first to visit the in- stitutions at Elmsford, and proceeding thence to the house of a friend in Peekskill, to hold services on the following day at a little country mission, in which the latter was interested and which Dr. Peters was in the habit of visiting each year. The next morning, August 1 3th, a few minutes before eleven, as the congregation of St. Michael's was assembling for service, came the mes- sage that Dr. Peters had passed away during the night.
They laid his body in St. Michael's Cemetery, which he had created, and on his tombstone were inscribed these words:
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Friend of the friendless, his life was devoted to the care of the needy. He founded many churches and benevolent institutions, also this cemetery.
Come ye Blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you. I was hungry and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was in prison and ye came unto me.
The following minute was spread on the records of the Vestry of St. Michael's Church :
Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God in His wise providence to take out of this world the soul of His Faith- ful servant, the Reverend Thomas McClure Peters, Doctor of Sacred Theology, Archdeacon of New York: for thirty- five years Rector of St. Michael's Church and ministering therein for more than fifty years, the Wardens and Vestry- men of St. Michael's Church desire to place upon the records of the Vestry this minute to his memory.
Dr. Peters in the several capacities of Lay Reader, As- sistant Minister and Rector, served St. Michael's Church for more than half a century; and the history of the growth and progress of the parish for more than half of its existence is the record of his life and labors.
He came to it when St. Michael's was a little country church-the outpost of the Church in this city and deriving its chief prominence from that fact.
It was his good fortune to begin his ministerial career under the guidance of one largely endowed with the true missionary spirit and under whom the spiritual foundations of the parish were laid broad and deep-the Rev. William Richmond, then the Rector, and when Mr. Richmond was called to his reward, St. Michael's found in Dr. Peters a worthy successor.
He brought to his work a vigor and enthusiasm which knew no exhaustion or abatement to the end. Under Dr.
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Peters' wise and tireless care, every line of parochial and missionary work which his pious predecessor had planned was developed and steadily and successfully carried on, and as occasion offered, new work was planned and under- taken, until St. Michael's has become the representative free church of the diocese, if not of the American Church- and is recognized to-day as one of the leading churches of the metropolis-the mother Church of the upper part of the city.
The Reverend Dr. Peters was the acknowledged leader in the missionary and charitable work of the Church in the Diocese of New York and his pre-eminence as a philan- thropist was recognized without the Church as well as within her borders.
He had the confidence of the whole community without regard to creed or condition, and it was long since a well- understood thing that no work for the succoring of the souls or bodies of men to which he gave the sanction of his name would fail for lack of sufficient pecuniary support.
Dr. Peters was gifted with a mind of singular clearness and practical ability and penetrated with so deep a sense of personal responsibility that no duty undertaken by him was ever performed perfunctorily or by proxy.
The Sheltering Arms, the Children's Fold, the City Mis- sion Society, the House of Rest for Consumptives, and other kindred institutions owe their existence and present pros- perous condition under God, mainly to his fostering care and devoted labors, and are in themselves monuments to his memory. While it is by works such as those just enu- merated that Dr. Peters is probably most widely known, they by no means represent the sum of his activities in the service of the Church and for the good of men: he was a trustee of the estates and property of the Church in the Diocese of New York, a manager of the Society for the Promotion of Religion and Learning, of the New York
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Hospital Association and of many other societies and boards having in charge the missions and charities of the Church, and in not one of them was he ever a mere place-holder.
He was also at the time of his death a member of the Standing Committee of the Diocese and Archdeacon of New York.
He was one of the first to perceive the advantages, if not the necessity, of dividing the great Diocese of New York, adhering to the project in the face of strong oppo- sition, with the tenacity which characterized him in every movement of the wisdom of which he was convinced. He was one of those to whom the Church is most largely indebted for the erection of the large and prosperous Dioceses of Albany and Long Island.
Few men in any calling have filled so many and im- portant offices of trust and it will be difficult to name one who has filled them with such faithfulness, ability and success.
We have enumerated several of the offices filled by our departed Rector for the reason that no minute of him would be at all accurate which omitted to take note of them, and that through his holding them, St. Michael's Church has been honored-but it is as Rector of the church and Pastor of his people that we desire and love especially to remember Dr. Peters.
In all his varied activities to the very close of his mortal life among us, no one duty to his church or parishioners was neglected. He was the faithful parish priest, jealous of his Master's service and honor, delighting in the daily round of prayer and praise; reverent in all the functions of his office and especially in the celebration of the Holy Communion. Singularly modest and simple in his manner and bearing, he was to all his people the true friend and wise counsellor, ever ready to give his best aid in all trials, spiritual or temporal.
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He has left a fragrant memory and a record which will endure as one of the chiefest treasures of St. Michael's Church, an incentive and example for all who in the times to come shall minister in this church.
Grant to him, Lord, eternal rest, and let light perpetual shine upon him.
THE THIRD CHURCH Consecrated. Dec. 15, 1891
CHAPTER VII
The Third Church; Telling the Story of the Present Rectorate, with Some Account of the Decoration of the Church, the Building of the Parish House, and the Development of Sociological and Neigh- borhood Activities in the Parish; and including the Famous Amster- dam Avenue Fight.
A T a Vestry meeting held August 14, 1893, the Rev. John P. Peters was elected Rector of St. Michael's Church to succeed his father, and on St. Luke's Day, October 18th, of the same year, he was instituted by the Bishop of the Diocese. Born and brought up in the parish, in which he had been already an assistant for ten years, his rectorship in its general policy, as well as in the details of the conduct of services and the like, has naturally been a continuance of the preceding. By the time of his accession to the cure, St. Michael's had become a city church and the neigh- borhood, while not yet fully built up, was a portion of the great city. Even the name of Bloomingdale had passed away, and to the annoyance and disgust of those who, trained in the old ways, had been wont to look down upon the lower level of Harlem, people had begun to designate this region also by that name. Bloomingdale Road and the old winding lanes had been obliterated and were forgotten, except by title- searchers; and even the streets and avenues which followed them had changed their names. The Boule-
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vard was now Broadway; Tenth Avenue, Amsterdam; Eleventh, West End, etc.
Nor was St. Michael's any longer the only church or one of the very few which ministered to the popu- lation of this district. It stood now on the same level with a multitude of other churches already built or preparing to build on every side. The little Presby- terian church in the wood at 84th Street had become a large new structure of stone on 86th Street and Am- sterdam Avenue. Another Presbyterian church had been organized at 105th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, where it was already erecting a building, to be enlarged shortly afterwards, and two more Presbyterian churches were about to move up from downtown into the im- mediate neighborhood. The Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Name had abandoned the old frame building erected in 1867, and commenced the construction of a great stone church on 96th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, and at intervals of half a mile or more up and down the west side the Roman Catholics were organizing new parishes to care for the large inflowing population. The Methodists still worshipped in a wooden structure built a dozen or fifteen years before on 104th Street, but were moving toward the construction of the large new Grace Church, now one of the leading Methodist churches in the city, the construction of that building to be followed by the removal to this region of another large church to accommodate the growing membership. The Baptists were building or about to build at 104th Street to the north and 92nd Street to the south. A German church had been built on 100th Street, almost under the eaves of St. Michael's, to care for the German Lutherans, who in the lack of other church accommodations had for so many years found a home in this old parish.
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Our own Church was likewise moving to provide new buildings and new parishes for the west side. In 1892 the old building of the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum was opened as a pro-cathedral, for regular services, which were later transferred to the Crypt. While the Cathedral has refused to accept any parochial responsibilities, for all practical purposes, including attendance at the parish church and contributions toward the support of the same, the result of the work there has been to cut off the northern section of St. Michael's parish, making its present practical limits 109th Street, although theoretically the boundary is 1 16th Street. The construction of the beautiful chapel of St. Elizabeth at the Memorial Hospital, and the opening of the chapel of St. Luke's Hospital, also de- veloped small separate centres of religious life within the parish. Other institutions which have moved up into the neighborhood, like the Home for Respectable Aged and Indigent Females, the Blind Home, St. Luke's Home for Old Men and Aged Couples, and St. Luke's Home for Old Ladies, have also chapels of their own in which services are held for the inmates. Before St. Michael's was completed the new All Angels' Church had been built on 8Ist Street and West End Avenue and Trinity had commenced to build its new chapel of St. Agnes, with its large parish house, and Trinity School adjoining, on 92nd Street, between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues, thus pushing up the boundaries of St. Michael's parish on the south to 96th Street. While there was abundant room and much need for services on the west side for both of these churches, and for others which were to follow, their particular character did not tend to make the work of St. Michael's any easier but rather harder. While technically a
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free church, by a device of evasion, the assignment of seats according to the amount of the subscription, All Angels' became in fact a class church, intended for the well-to-do. St. Agnes, also, on which, as in the case of Trinity Chapel almost half a century before, Trinity had spent more than twice the sum which it spends on churches in poor localities, unable to provide for themselves, was a pewed church. This was not for the reason generally assigned for renting or selling pews, the need of revenue, but apparently because Trinity Corporation believes in class churches; one sort for the wealthy and another for the poor. Here were realized precisely those conditions which Dr. T. M. Peters had described in a sermon preached before the Free Church Guild, in St. Ann's Church, December 4, 1873:
You have given us here a terrible burden to bear. We must make bricks and you monopolize the straw. If we go outside of New York, or perhaps we may say of our large cities, you will find the system of free-will offerings so far successful, that nearly one-half the churches of our Com- munion in the United States are now entirely free; and there are dioceses in which, with one or two exceptions, every church is free. This spread of the practice indicates of itself the general success. In this city the very name of free church for long years had its synonym in "poor people's church." The multiplication by rich pewed churches of free churches intended for the poor, has cast a sympathizing shadow over all free churches. Even to this day to say, one goes to a free church, is at least a con- fession that one does not go where fashionable people gather; that most of their fellow worshippers are plain, many poor. The pewed churches, not the free, are however responsible for this condition of things. Their first aim is to offer ad- vantages which will gain them a revenue; ours to get a
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congregation. They induce the rich to attend. We suc- ceed in persuading the poor to enter. All have equally souls to be saved, but it is much easier to carry on ar- rangements for the saving of souls that can pay, than of those which cannot. If we have the latter, it is because they have the former. Remove all the social distinctions out of Christ's kingdom, so that as we stand in God's sight, thus we assemble also in church, high and low, rich and poor, one with another, all perfectly equal in our spiritual relations, and it will no longer be objected that financially the free church is a failure.
And elsewhere in the same sermon he says:
A survey of the Church which proclaimed at first the destruction of privilege and equality of membership, and practised the community of wealth, reveals now the wonderful and sad conformity of the Church to the world. The social ranks; the exclusiveness of wealth; its com- fortable enjoyments; its gratified tastes; the worship of money in elevating into false position him who seems to possess it; the lifting up those who stand high; the crowding down those who are already low; the thousand points which mark the increasing inequality of the world : behold them all reproduced and triumphant here in the Church. So far as, and whereinsoever this is so, the pro- gress of Christianity, bound up in the existence of the Church, will be impeded and checked. No attempts at compensation can balance or neutralize an evil whose foundation is inequality, in those respects in which Chris- tians were once made equal before God.
One of the evils and abuses of the Church of this day is the assigning for money in ownership or exclusive pos- session pews or seats in the house of God. That which was introduced for one purpose, has been pressed into quite an antagonistic service. That which was once designed to bring people into church, now operates to keep them out. of it.
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The natural result of these conditions is that many persons of means, living territorially in St. Michael's parish, who would, conditions being equal, attend and support that church, desirous to advance or maintain their social position by means of their church relations, and being led to regard St. Michael's as a church for the poor or those inferior socially, have connected themselves with these more well-to-do parishes, thus depriving St. Michael's of that amount of financial sup- port and laying a greater burden upon the poor with whom they should have united in the work and worship of their own parish and neighborhood. It should be added, also, that in the upbuilding of this region the immediate neighborhood of St. Michael's Church toward the River, where the richer people have their houses, has been singularly slow in development, while the region toward Columbus Avenue has built up with the poorest class of tenements on the upper west side. St. Michael's is therefore admirably situated for preaching the Gospel, with a large poor population at its very doors; but not so favorably located from the purse or pocket point of view.
When the congregation moved into the new church it was almost entirely unadorned. Mr. R. L. Lamb, whose family had been worshippers in the old church, had erected two windows on the west aisle in memory of his wife and mother, the Guest window from the old church had been set up in the west gallery, and a couple of small windows from the old church on the stairway to that gallery; outside of this the great windows of the new church were all of plain, unadorned cathedral glass. The little wooden altar from the old church had been placed in the great chancel, a plain deal table serving as altar in the Chapel of the Angels. The
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