USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York : its origin, rise, and progress Vol. III > Part 25
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2 The original session of this church consisted of John Currie, Andrew Gifford, David Clark, John Agnew, and James Nelson.
3 The Elizabeth Street Church was dissolved by the Presbytery in 1813, it being too feeble to sustain itself.
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ever, the spirit of progress which actuated the New York mind soon be- came visible in the laying out of Hudson Square, covering an entire block in front of the church.
In Ann Street, a few doors east of Nassau, stood Christ's Church, founded in 1794; in 1810 it counted three hundred members in communion; and in 1823 a new edi- fice was erected in Anthony Street, a little west of Broad- way. Its rector from 1805 to 1848 was Rev. Dr. Thomas Lyell. The French Church, Du St. Es- prit, in Pine Street, was open for wor- ship until 1834, at which time the property was sold, and the congrega- tion removed to an elegant structure of white marble in Franklin Street, cor- ner of Church. In Broome Street, cor- ner of Chrystie, St. Stephen's Church was built in 1805. Upon the site of the old chapel of Gov- ernor Stuyvesant in Second Avenue, cor- ner of Eleventh St. John's Church. Street, - beneath which was the Stuyvesant vault - St. Mark's Church was opened for worship in 1799, the property having been generously donated to the vestry of Trinity Church by the great grandson of the governor, together with some eight hundred pounds sterling in money
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towards the erection of the edifice. Rev. Dr. William Harris was the rector from 1801 to 1816, although elected president of Columbia College in 1811. Grace Church was founded in 1805, and a spacious edifice was soon erected in Broadway, near Trinity Church, upon the site of the old Lutheran Church which was burned in 1776 ; the elegant church in Broad- way, corner of Tenth Street, was completed by this organization in 1846 ; the first rector was Rev. Dr. Nathaniel Bowen. Zion Church stood in 1810 in Mott Street, corner of Cross ; it was built by a small society of Lutherans in 1801, and was afterwards received into the communion of the Episcopal Church ; Rev. Ralph Williston was the pastor from 1811 to 1815, when the building was burned, and about two years later rebuilt. In the neighborhood of Manhattanville and Washington Heights many families desired religious privileges ; therefore, in 1807, St. Michael's Church was founded, and a small frame building erected at Bloomingdale. In 1810 St. James's Church was formed, and a church edifice erected about a mile east of St. Michael's. The two parishes were associated under the rectorship of the Rev. Dr. Samuel Farmer Jarvis until 1818, when he was appointed Professor of Biblical Learning in the new General Theo- logical Seminary established in New York. The colored Episcopalians held a service by themselves in a school-room in William Street from 1809 to 1812, after which they removed to a room in Cliff Street, where they worshipped for several years ; in 1819 they erected St. Philip's Church in Centre Street, between Leonard and Anthony. Calvary Church, near Corlaer's Hook, resulted from a missionary effort in 1810 of the Rev. Benjamin P. Aydelott, a physician who had received orders, and entered with great enthusiasm into the work of preaching the Gospel to the inhabitants of that locality. A church was regularly organized with eleven members in August of that year, but it afterwards became extinct.
The Reformed Dutch Church had at the same time not less than seven houses of worship. It was the oldest organization of Christians in the city, and distinguished for the high character of its well-trained theologians and devoted ministers. The three principal churches, Garden Street, Middle Church, and North Church, described upon former pages, consti- tuted a collegiate charge- a plan which seems to have prevailed among all the early churches of New York, and was first abandoned by the Presbyterians. The old church in Garden Street was taken down in 1807, and a new edifice erected on the same site - which was destroyed in 1835 by fire, and its successor rebuilt on Washington Square. In 1813 a petition from the congregation procured a separation from the collegiate connection, and this church proceeded to form a Consistory of
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its own. Its pastor for a series of years was Rev. Dr. James M. Mathews. The Middle Dutch Church, in Nassau Street, was occupied for divine service until 1844. Meanwhile, in 1807, the consistory of the collegiate church built the Northwest Church, in Franklin Street, near West Broad- way ; and the same year enlarged the little wooden church in Greenwich village, which had been erected in 1782. A church was founded at Har- lem soon after the settlement of the city ; and about 1805 Jacob Harsen erected at Bloomingdale, upon his own land, a small wooden building for public worship, which was formally dedicated by Rev. Dr. Livingston on the last Sabbath in June of that year. In October the officers were duly installed, and the edifice conveyed to the organization by Mr. Harsen. In 1808 the Rev. Alexander Gunn was called to the pastorate ; and six years later a substantial structure was erected by the congregation in Sixty-eighth Street, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues.
The German Reformed Church, built in Nassau Street before the Revo- lution through the efforts of Dominie Kern, was sold in 1804, and a new edifice erected in Forsyth Street. A controversy arose about the same time concerning the church property, which two adverse parties within the organization, one Calvinistic, and connected with the collegiate Re- formed Dutch, and the other Lutheran and standing alone, both claimed ; at length, in 1834, the Lutheran party obtained possession of the edifice. Ten years later the decision was reversed, and the Calvinistic party re- turned, while the Lutherans retired to Columbia Hall in Grand Street. In 1846, by a decision of the Court of Errors, the Lutherans once more took possession of the building. Their minister was connected with the Lutheran Synod, and officiated in the German language.
The Lutherans whose church was burned in Broadway in 1776 united after the war with another congregation of Lutherans who had in 1767 erected a small stone edifice, known as the Swamp Church, in William Street, corner of Frankfort, where the Rev. Dr. John Christopher Kunze was the stated pastor from 1784 until his death in 1807. He was suc- ceeded by Rev. Dr. F. G. Geissenhainer. Both of these divines preached in the German language only.
The Baptists had already expanded into eight distinct church organiza,- tions. As early as 1770 a difficulty in the First Baptist Church arose about psalmody. It had been the usage of the church to have the lines parceled out as sung, but an innovation was desired with such persistence that fourteen members seceded and formed the Second Baptist Church. Their first pastor was Rev. John Dodge of Long Island. In 1791 a division arose in the Second Church, which resulted in the founding of a third church, and the erection of an edifice in 1795 in Oliver Street, corner of
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Henry, which was enlarged and rebuilt in 1800. The Second, afterwards called the Bethel Church, built a church edifice of wood in Broome Street, near the Bowery, in 1806. The Mulberry Street Church was formed in 1809, and until 1838 was under the ministry of Rev. Dr. Archi- bald Maclay. In 1809 the North Beriah Church was also formed, a colony of some thirty members from the First Baptist Church having united in a new church enterprise, and erected a frame building in Van Dam Street, between Varick and Hudson. It was known as the North Church until after the War of 1812. The structure was burned in 1819, and its suc- cessor rebuilt in McDougall Street, near Van Dam. In the mean time the Scotch Baptists formed a church in 1802, styled the Ebenezer Baptist Church, and in 1806 built a small house of worship in Anthony Street, near West Broadway. In 1809 the Abyssinian Church was organized, consisting of a colony of colored people from the First Baptist Church, and bought the little edifice so recently completed by the Scotch Baptists in Anthony Street, who obtained a frame building in York Street not quite as costly. In 1807 a party of seventy-six Welsh Baptists, all com- municants, organized into a church, with Rev. John Stephens pastor, worshiping in a small house in Mott Street.
Two Methodist churches were formed in 1810, the Allen Street Church and the Bedford Street Church, the former erecting a stone edifice in Allen Street, seventy feet by fifty-five, and the latter a frame building in Bedford Street, corner of Morton. These, with the four churches of this denomination before mentioned, and one African Methodist - which had a small brick edifice, erected in 1800 in Church Street, corner of Leonard - comprise the seven Methodist churches of 1812. There were, also, one Moravian Church ; one Universalist Church, located in Pearl Street near Chatham ; one Congregational Church, built in Elizabeth Street, between Walker Street and Hester, in 1809; two Quaker meeting- houses, one in Pearl Street near Franklin Square, built in 1775, and the other in Liberty Street in 1802 - a brick building sixty by forty feet ; one Jewish Synagogue, in Mill Street, and one Roman Catholic Church. While the English laws were in force prior to the close of the Revolu- tion, no Catholic clergyman was allowed to officiate in the State of New York. But in all legislation after the war every man was permitted to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. The Ro- man Catholics formed a congregation in 1783, and commenced worship in a small building in Vauxhall Garden, on the margin of the Hudson, until St. Peter's Church was completed in Barclay Street, corner of Church, in 1786. For more than thirty years this was the only Catholic church in the city of New York.
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CANAL STREET.
Deep and strong New York had laid the foundation of her religious society in the beginning. Thus the wonder is not that her church edi- fices increased in proportion to the rapid spread of her boundaries, until the number reached fifty-nine prior to the second war with Great Britian, many of which were spacious, elegant, and costly, but that so much was done in this direction during the marked period of pecuniary distress from 1807 to 1812.
The creation and regulation of streets form a chapter of interest and im- portance tory of the lis. While discussion tercourse ting every foreshad- Foot of Canal Street and Hudson River. [From an original pencil-sketch by Alexander Anderson. ] most seri- in the his- metropo- the grave of non-in- was agita- mind, and owing the ous con- sequences, new roadways were springing into existence, and by-paths and alleys striking new levels or new orbits, and growing like mush- rooms in the night. In the midst of the struggle to obtain appro- priations from the government for defenses, and the general feeling of insecurity pervading New York City-the shining mark for a foreign foe -the labor of grading hills and elevating valleys went forward with as much apparent spirit as if the whole ambition of the community was involved. The minutes of the Common Council teem with reports of commissioners and surveyors, and with resolutions for opening and elongating streets, until the city was actually blockaded by the British.
The corporation brain encountered no puzzle half as formidable as the proper course to be pursued with the swamp in the region of Canal Street. Broadway was graded below the stone bridge, and for some distance above, and Spring Street was marked out, and houses built in certain parts of it, while yet nothing but a small sluggish stream of water marked the site of the broad and convenient Canal Street of to-day. The Lispenard Meadows were overflowed with water at some seasons of the year, and in winter they formed a skating pond for thousands of persons who delighted in the amusement, as the Collect, or Fresh Water Pond had done before its beauty was spoiled by the filling in of offal and rubbish. The point where the Canal Street rivulet united with the Hudson River was sketched one winter's morning in the early part of the century by Alexander Anderson, the first wood-engraver in America, and the scene represented is in such striking contrast with that of the same locality at the present day that it is reproduced for the
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entertainment of the public. The habitable portion of the city had crept up the Bowery as far as Bond Street. Various schemes had been discussed of disposing of the Collect, and Canal Street had been laid out upon paper by competent engineers as many times as there were months in the calendar. The most feasible plan for some years seemed to be the construction of a canal or tunnel on a level one foot below low-water mark, passing directly through the pond, from the East River to the Hudson, which should drain the meadows adjacent as well, " carrying off the water from the streets that descend thereto." Before funds had been raised for its execution, the idea of filling the pond with the cleanest and best earth which could be obtained was acted upon; at the same time an effort was made to dig from the bot- tom a sediment soil formed from decomposed vegetable matter similar to peat or turf, extending to a great depth, and which it was believed might be converted into fuel and thus prove remunerative. Laborers were employed in the summer of 1808 for one or two months, but for some reason the work was discontinued, and the old process of "filling in " again prevailed.
During the same season a great clamor arose among property owners along the line of Canal or Duggan Street - as it was at first called from Thomas Duggan, a large property-owner in the vicinity - which had been temporarily laid out in 1806. The method which met with more general approbation than any other had been laid aside for less prac- ticable suggestions, and then reconsidered, until any one plan, however imperfect, if only permanent, was sought as a special boon. It was rep- resented that upwards of three thousand lots fronting on the proposed street could not be improved, and that cellars, wherever they existed, were filled with water. At what is now the corner of Grand Street and Greene, as was stated, a man had walked into deep water by mistake in the night and been drowned. Some went so far as to declare that when the Hudson and the East Rivers were swollen with the spring tides " their waters ran into and covered the swamps, meeting one another."
In accordance with an earnest petition, application was made to the Legislature, and an act passed appointing commissioners to decide upon the method, and to regulate and open the street. This was a separate and distinct act from the one passed April 3, 1807, appointing Gouverneur Morris, Simeon De Witt, and John Rutherford " commissioners of streets and roads in the city of New York "; and all three of those gentlemen declined to serve on the new commission, their duties lying chiefly above Houston Street. Difficulties of a scientific character interposed, and the year 1809 was well advanced before the tangled meadows and wild grass
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"It resulted finally in a street one hundred feet wide with a ditch or open canal in its center bordered with shade trees, upon either side of which was a broad drive lined with habitations-and which was very naturally called Canal street. " Page 567
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began to disappear. The drainage must necessarily embrace a consider- able extent of high land to the north, where the permanent grade of the streets had not yet been established. Thus the work progressed slowly, and with many interruptions. It resulted finally in a street one hundred feet wide with a ditch or open canal in its center bordered with shade trees, upon either side of which was a broad drive lined with habi- tations - and which was very naturally called Canal Street.
In the mean time the Collect received the tops of all the eminences in the neighborhood, and was obliterated from the topography of the city. East of its site were several unfinished streets for many years. The property in the neighborhood of the Jews' burial-ground was not con- sidered worth anything - at least nobody could be found willing to buy it at any price. But there were several estates lying beyond, which sub- sequently became extremely valuable. The Banckers owned a large tract of land in the vicinity of Bancker - afterwards Madison - Street, adjoining the Roosevelt property, from which Roosevelt Street received its name. And the Janeways were extensive real-estate proprietors in the same neighborhood at one period. Colonel Rutgers was immensely rich in lands, and one of the most liberal men of his time in the matter of donating sites for public buildings and streets.
On the west side of the town the wealthy corporation of Trinity Church was munificent in contributing landed property to the authorities for streets - as it was required from year to year. In 1808 it ceded to the city the ground for Washington Street, from Christopher Street to the Hudson River ; also that for Greenwich Street from Spring Street north to the ex- tent of the church property, for Hudson Street from North Moore Street to Vestry Street, for Varick Street from North Moore Street to Vestry Street, for Beach Street from Hudson to east boundary of church land, for Laight Street from Hudson to east boundary of church land, for Vestry Street from Greenwich Street to east boundary of church land, for Des- brosses Street from Greenwich Street to Hudson River, for Le Roy Street from Hudson Street to Hudson River, for Van Dam, Charlton, King, Hamersley, Clarkson, Barrow, and Morton Streets as far as the church lands extended from east to west, and for two alleys, each twenty-five feet wide - one in the rear of St. John's Church, and the other from Beach Street to Laight Street. The beautiful park itself, in front of St. John's Church, was not only appropriated from the Trinity Church domains and made the pride of the city, but embellished at the expense of the church corporation. At the same time hardly a form could be mentioned in which the liberality of Trinity Church was not manifested toward- the younger and needy Episcopal churches not only of the city but of every section
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of the State. Gifts of communion-plate, organs, bells, salaries, and lots, were of common occurrence, donations reached hundreds of aged and infirm clergymen from time to time, institutions of learning were en- dowed, and loans were granted which in a few years exceeded a million of dollars.
The labors of Bishop Moore in this field terminated through a severe illness in February, 1811, from which he never recovered, although he survived until 1816. He had been associated in the duties of the Trinity Church pulpit since 1774, shortly after his return from England, where he was ordained by the Bishop of London in the Episcopal palace at Fulham. Upon the resignation of Bishop Provoost in 1801 he was unani- mously elected his successor. From 1801 to 1811 he was also president of Columbia College, but the terms of his acceptance of the office relieved him from all regular instruction and the details of college discipline, confining his duties to presiding at the public examination of classes, the weekly declamations, at commencements, and other public occasions. His style of conferring degrees was very charming. He was a slender man, of medium stature, and a bright, attractive countenance ; and with- out the least semblance of affectation or any attempt to appear con- descending or patronizing, his manners were the perfection of grace, dignity, and gentleness, reflecting both intelligence of mind and loveliness of character. "His voice," wrote the Rev. Dr. David Moore, " though feeble rather than powerful, was music to the ear, and his enunciation was so distinct that the most distant hearer was in no danger of losing a word." He was always ready to sympathize with those in difficulty or trouble ; and the truly catholic spirit breathing through his whole con- duct radiated an influence which might be traced in thousands of praise- worthy deeds that seemed to emanate from other sources than himself. In his thirty-seven years' connection with Trinity Church he celebrated no less than three thousand five hundred marriages, according to the parish register, and baptized over three thousand persons. He retained the office of Rector and Bishop of New York during life; but Rev. Dr. John Henry Hobart was consecrated assistant bishop in May, 1811, and in 1816 became Diocesan of New York. Rev. Dr. Abraham Beach was appointed assistant rector to Bishop Moore. He was then over seventy years of age, and had been leading a noiseless course of usefulness as assist- ant minister of Trinity parish for twenty-seven years.1 He retired, how-
1 Rev. Abraham Beach, D. D. (born 1740, died 1728), was the son of Captain Elnathan Beach, of Cheshire, Connecticut, whose second wife, the mother of the great divine, was the sister of General David Wooster, who fell while opposing the British at the burning of Danbury. (See page 160, Vol. II.) Rev. Dr. Beach married Ann, daughter and sole heiress of Evert Van
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ever, from the pulpit in 1813. He was an elegant scholar, and " one of the excellent of the earth." Elected a Regent of the University of New York in 1784, he took a deep interest in educational affairs, and was named in the charter of Columbia College in 1787 as one of its trustees ; for many years he was secretary of the board. During a considerable portion of his busy life in New York he was the rector of Christ's Church in New Brunswick.
All that was romantic in scenery and prepossessing in cultivated grounds immediately above Canal Street was quickly doomed. The city was on the march, and every form of hill and dale and pleasant valley must be sacrificed. From the Bayard mansion, on the summit of the high point of land between Grand Street and Broome, the views - just before the edifice was built downward, so to speak - embraced a curious variety of suggestive scenes. The valley of Canal Street at its foot had been trans- formed into a busy thoroughfare, no longer presenting a pastoral picture with streams of water flowing through it into both rivers, that on the east finding its way through the low lands along the line of Roosevelt Street; and over the roofs and foliage of the new street the City Hos- pital could be seen, and then the city itself in outline, its smoke and spires reaching into the sky ; to the southwest the handsome country- seat of Leonard Lispenard was plainly visible, crowning a beautiful emi- nence near St. John's Church ; to the north of west appeared, above the intervening fields and glens, the green woods which surrounded Rich- mond Hill; to the north and northeast a half-dozen villas, including those of the Stuyvesants, met the eye in peculiar fellowship with inter- mediate dwellings of every description scattered along the neighborhood of the Bowery road ; while in the distance the Hudson and East Rivers, the magnificent bay, and the shores and heights beyond, completed as fair a prospect as could be found on either continent.
The enemy, with its armor of pickaxes, stood back appalled at the strong, firm, bold front which the Bayard Hill presented. It seemed in- vincible. But the assault was finally made, the citadel yielded, and the inhabitants fled. As for the real-estate owners, they were solaced by the rise of property. Fortunes grew while dwellings, stables, flower-gardens,
Winkle, one of the original Dutch settlers on the Raritan, near New Brunswick. Their eldest daughter married Rev. Elijah D. Rattoone, D. D. ; another daughter was the wife of Rev. Thomas Lyell, D. D., rector of Christ's Church, New York ; a third daughter married Rev. Abiel Carter, rector of the Episcopal Church in Savannah ; and a fourth daughter married Isaac Lawrence of New York, and was the mother of the author and jurist, William Beach Lawrence, and of the wife of James A. Hillhouse, of New Haven. - Sprague's Annals of the American Pulpit ; Dr. Berrian's History of Trinity Church ; Disosway's Earliest Churches of New York ; Greenleaf's History of the Churches.
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fruit-orchards, grassy lawns, summer-houses, lovers' walks, and finely shaded private avenues tumbled promiscuously into the mass of worth- less ruins -and posterity was enriched. The humorous etching of John P. Emmet, Professor of Chemistry in the University of Virginia, showing the condition of Bayard's house during the jubilee of destruction, which he designates as "corporation improvements," will be regarded with a smile of credulity, and a twinge of painful reminiscence, by all those who have witnessed the demolition of their earthy idols, " with the approba- tion and permission of the mayor, aldermen, and com-
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