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SOUTH CHURCH/ PARK AVENUE CHRISTIAN CHURCH A History and Analysis of the Church Complex Andrew S. Dolkart 2013 SOUTH CHURCH/ PARK AVENUE CHRISTIAN CHURCH A History and Analysis of the Church Complex Report prepared by Andrew S. Dolkart Report prepared for 1000 Park Avenue 2013 The South Church complex, now the Park Avenue Christian Church complex, designed and built in 1909-11 by the South Dutch Reformed Church, is one of the most significant buildings on Park Avenue dating from the period of major development along that premier New York City boulevard. It is also a major example of Neo-Gothic church architecture and a significant design by Bertram Goodhue, the New York City partner in the firm of Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson, one of the preeminent American designers of the early twentieth century. The South Reformed Church complex consists of the impressive Gothic-inspired church on the southwest corner of Park Avenue and East 85th Street, and the adjoining parish house (sometimes referred to as the parsonage). The church building remains almost exactly as designed by Goodhue, while the parish house was partially altered in a surprisingly sensitive manner in 1962. Together, the church and parish house create an important unified architectural ensemble on the corner of Park Avenue and East 85th Street. They share a Gothic-inspired architectural vocabulary and both are faced with locally-quarried Manhattan schist with Indiana limestone trim. In scale and design, the two related structures play off of one another providing an important, low-scale visual anchor to this section of Park Avenue. The significance of the South Church was widely recognized at the time of its design and at the time of its completion. Images and critiques were published in almost all of the east coast architectural magazines and in several books as well. It was also recognized as an “architecturally distinguished structure” by the Municipal Art Society in 1957 and received a New York Community Trust bronze plaque in 1960. The complex is unquestionably eligible for individual listing as a New York City landmark and the church and parish house would be a highly contributing element within a Park Avenue Historic District. South Church What became the South Church was the second congregation established by the Collegiate Reformed Dutch Church, the church established by the Dutch upon the founding of the settlement of New Amsterdam.1 The first church was established in circa 1628 and ministered to all of the Dutch Calvinist in the small town. As the population grew and as the area of settlement in New Amsterdam (New York after 1664) expanded, a new church was needed. Thus, in 1690, the Garden Street Reformed Protestant Dutch Church was established on what is now Exchange Place, just south of Wall Street. The original church was replaced by a larger 1 stone structure in 1807. In 1812, the congregation separated from the Collegiate Church and became entirely independent. The church building was destroyed in the Great Fire of December 1835. Rather than rebuild within the surviving walls, the congregation chose to move north, to Murray and Church Streets, closer to where members lived, dedicating its new Greek Revival style church building in 1837. The church did not remain long on Murray Street. The city was expanding northward with great rapidity and the church needed to keep pace with its members or they would leave and join more conveniently located congregations. Indeed, the history of South Church in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is one of constant northward relocation. In 1848, the final service was held on Murray Street and a year later, a new church, designed in a fashionable Gothic Revival style, was completed on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 21st Street, in the heart of an area that was developing into the city’s wealthiest residential neighborhood. But the Madison Square neighborhood where the church had relocated was destined to become increasingly commercial, with department stores and office buildings erected in the years following the Civil War. Thus, in 1890, South Church purchased the former Zion Episcopal Church on Madison Avenue and East 35th Street. By the early twentieth century, Madison Avenue and 38th Street was losing its residential character as commerce impinged on the area, especially along nearby Fifth Avenue. The Upper East Side was rapidly developing as the city’s premier residential district and, in 1908, the congregation of South Church decided to follow this move north. In July 1908, the church announced that it had purchased property for a new church on the southwest corner of Park Avenue and East 83rd Street.2 Development on Park Avenue Development on Park Avenue, originally Fourth Avenue on the 1811 Commissioners’ Plan that created New York’s street grid, lagged behind that on parallel avenues due to the presence of the tracks of the New York Central Railroad which ran down the middle of the street. Although the tracks were below street level, conditions were not conducive to substantial real estate 2 investment because of steam venting on the street, noise, and vibrations. Thus, by 1900, many sites on Park Avenue north of 59th Street were vacant and others were filled with modest row houses and tenements. A law passed by the New York State Legislature following a serious accident in the tunnels in 1902 banned steam trains from Manhattan, resulting in the electrification of the rail line, the complete decking of the tracks, and the creation of the street’s distinctive landscaped malls. This was the impetus for change on the avenue; as the Real Estate Record and Builders Guide noted “the mainspring of the movement was the elimination of locomotive smoke and noises, leaving what was naturally a broad and handsome parkway in peace and quietness.”3 Park Avenue was now poised for a transformation from a street of modest row houses and tenements into a grand boulevard of mansions, apartment houses, and institutions for the wealthy. One of the unique aspects of development along Park Avenue is that mansions, low-rise institutional buildings (largely churches), and apartment buildings of twelve or more stories rose simultaneously. The earliest apartment houses on Park Avenue, between 59th and 96th Streets, are no. 865 at East 77th Street and no. 925 at East 80th Street, both erected in 1907-08. This was followed by one building in 1909, no. 563 on the northeast corner of 62nd Street. Apartment house construction expanded in 1910, with at least three new buildings in that year and at least four more in 1911. Townhouses and mansions were also erected at this time: Percy and Maud H. Pyne built their townhouse on the northwest corner of 68th Street in 1906-12 and Jonathan and Sarah Bulkley built a house on the northwest corner of 64th Street in 1910-11. Thus, while the apartment building is the dominant building type on the avenue, the scale of buildings along Park Avenue is quite varied, lending a sense of excitement as lowrise and midrise buildings coexist, all with their facades hugging the lot lines, creating a strong street wall. This is made even more interesting by the survival of some modest middle- and working-class dwellings from earliest period of development, including the row houses on the southeast corner of 95th Street and the northeast corner of 91st Street, and the tenements at 821 and 957 Park Avenue. Church complexes have been an important part of Park Avenue’s character since its development as a wealthy residential neighborhood began. By the mid-twentieth century seven important 3 church complexes had been erected on the avenue, six of which are extant. Four of these six buildings are protected by landmark designation – one church, St. Ignatius Loyola Roman Catholic, is an individual landmark; two, Third Church of Christ Scientist and Park Avenue Baptist (now Central Presbyterian Church), are in the Upper East Side Historic District; and one, Brick Presbyterian Church, is in the Carnegie Hill Extension Historic District. Only South Church (now Park Avenue Christian Church) and Christ Methodist, on East 61st Street, remain unprotected. Ironically, both of these buildings were designed by the leading church architecture firm of the early decades of the twentieth century – Ralph Adams Cram designed Christ Methodist in 1931, while his earlier firm, Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson, designed South Church, with partner Bertram Goodhue in charge. South Church on Park Avenue South Church was in the vanguard of church construction on Park Avenue for the new class of wealthy New Yorkers moving to the area. In 1908, South Church purchased land on the corner of Park Avenue and East 83rd Street, but that was not destined to be the site of the congregation’s new home. In early 1909, South Church participated in a complex real estate deal that resulted in their trading the 83rd Street site for a larger property on the southwest corner of Park Avenue and 85th Street. As the New York Times reported, “by this deal the church gets a site . where a new edifice coasting $250,000 will be erected in the near future.” Meanwhile, a real estate company retained the land “adjoining the church site on the south, which will probably be resold or improved in suitable manner. The whole series of transactions should be of material benefit to the surrounding neighborhood and making possible the further extension northward of the high- class residential section on Park Avenue.”4 The article also announced that Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson was preparing plans for the new church complex. By the early years of the twentieth century, Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson had become a leading American designer of churches, largely in the medieval Gothic tradition.