The Meeting House in January 2020
This striking building is one of the few non-residential structures in one of Manhattan's most sought-after and historic neighborhoods. Located just off Gramercy Park, nestled among buildings where one-bedroom apartments sell for over a million dollars, the old Friends Meeting House, now home to the Brotherhood Synagogue, was one of the first buildings designated as a New York City Landmark. Though primarily recognized for its architecture, the Meeting House symbolizes many features of New York City that make it such a unique place in the world and history. This building symbolizes the city's religious freedom, diverse cultures, and the potential of historic structures protected by the Landmarks Law in a place usually focused on progress rather than preservation.
THE BROTHERHOOD SYNAGOGUE
(FORMERLY THE FRIENDS MEETINGHOUSE)
144 EAST 20TH STREET
IN 1859, THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS, KNOWN AS QUAKERS, COMMISSIONED THE FRIM OF KING AND KELLUM TO DESIGN A STRUCTURE "EXACTLY SUITED FOR A FRIENDS MEETING, ENTIRELY PLAIN, NEAT AND CHASTE, OF GOOD TASTE, BUT AVOIDING ALL USELESS ORNAMENT." THIS BUILDING IS ANGLO-ITALIANATE IN STYLE AND DECORATED WITH RENAISSANCE-STYLE CORNICES, PEDIMENTS AND ARCHED WINDOWS. IT WAS PURCHASED AND RESTORED BY THE BROTHERHOOD SYNAGOGUE IN 1975. NEW YORK LANDMARKS PRESERVATION FOUNDATION 1990.
The Quakers in NYC
The Old Quaker Meeting House on Northern Boulevard in Flushing, Queens, is also an NYC Landmark and a National Historic Landmark. Flushing has a long history with Quakers and is where they first came to prominence in New York
Before New York was New York, New Amsterdam was founded by the Dutch and named after their capital city. From the beginning, New York shared several characteristics with its original namesake, including its reputation as a haven for religious minorities. Amsterdam became such a place during the Eighty Years' War in the late 1500s and early 1600s, as the Dutch fought for their independence from Spain and established the city as a central European trading and business hub. Their colony would play the same role in the New World.
The first Quakers in New York City arrived in 1642, settling in Throggs Neck in the Bronx, with the permission of the Dutch Director of New Amsterdam, Willem Kieft. Eventually, these early New York Quakers made their way across the Sound to Long Island, which at the time was a collection of English and Dutch villages.
Unfortunately, future Directors of New Amsterdam were not so welcoming. During the rule of Peter Stuyvesant, Quaker preacher Robert Hodgson ignited such a firestorm on Long Island that he was arrested in Hempstead and brought to Manhattan for trial, where he was sentenced to two years of hard labor, hung in chains, brutally whipped, and then deported to Rhode Island. The incident came soon after a ship of Quakers arrived in New York harbor and sent two women ashore who promptly began screaming that the end was near and all should repent. Stuyvesant had had enough of Quakers and moved to ban them from the colony. But his religious bigotry was no match for progress, as is often the case in New York.
John Browne's house in Queens is also a New York City Landmark, is one of the oldest homes in the five boroughs, and was the headquarters of the Quaker community in Flushing before the construction of the meeting house shown at the top of this section
In response to Stuyvesant, on December 27, 1657, the residents of Flushing, Queens, where John Browne led a flourishing Quaker community, published a document known today as the Flushing Remonstrance, perhaps the first written defense of the now-sacred principle of religious freedom on land that became the United States. The letter reminded Stuyvesant of the religious liberties available in Amsterdam and the teachings of Jesus to do good for all. It also stated the town's refusal to "lay violent hands upon" Quakers as Stuyvesant had commanded. He responded to the document by having Browne arrested and deported back to Holland. The move backfired when Browne successfully got Stuyvesant's bosses at the Dutch West India Company to overrule him. When the English took over New Amsterdam and turned it into New York, they allowed the Quakers to continue their worship in Flushing. Religious freedom was here to stay in New York.
By the 1690s, one visitor from Virginia reported that in New York City, residents "seem not concerned what religion their neighbor is of, or whether he hath any or none." An unofficial census around the same time reported an "abundance of Quakers," including both "Singing Quakers" and "Ranting Quakers."
During the American Revolution, the British confiscated the Quaker Meeting House in Flushing (pictured above). It served as a prison, storehouse, and hospital. When the American colonists won independence, the Quakers of New York were the first to free their slaves voluntarily. They were key organizers of the New York Manumission Society, which lobbied for emancipation in the state.
A Quaker named Thomas Eddy was also the founder of the New York Free School Society in 1805, an early advocate for universal free public education, which set up schools that operated on the methods of another Quaker, Joseph Lancaster.
In Manhattan specifically, according to the Landmark designation form of the Friends Seminary, today located (somewhat ironically) on Stuyvesant Square: "The earliest mention of a Friends Meeting in Manhattan is under the date of 12th of 8th month (August) 1687 where it was agreed that '...ye first day meeting (Sunday) shall remain at Robt. Story & ye fifth day (Thursday) meeting at Lewis Morris house until a publick meeting house shall be provided.'"
Located a few blocks from the old Friends Meeting House that is the subject of this post, this Meeting House on Stuyvesant Square, also an NYC Landmark, was built by the Hicksite Quakers around the same time. After the two sects reunited in the 1950s, this building and the Seminary to its right became the center of Quaker life in Manhattan and have remained so ever since
The current New York Yearly Meeting, the modern Quaker organization in the city, dates the first Quaker meeting to 1671. This meeting may have been a more permanent version of the 1687 assembly mentioned in the landmark designation. The New York Yearly Meeting was established in 1695, decades after the Flushing Remonstrance. The landmark designation lists the construction of Manhattan's first Quaker Meeting House as happening just a year later: "In 1696 a small frame meeting house was built on what is now known as Liberty Place, then known as Little Green Street."
That facility would serve the Quaker community for nearly 100 years until "a substantial meeting house of brick was built on Pearl Street between Franklin Square and Oak Street in 1775-6." That building lasted until 1824, when the area became primarily commercial, and stores replaced it. A new building was built nearby on Rose Street, now covered by the Manhattan approach of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Around this time, the Quaker community in Manhattan faced its biggest challenge: a schism that split it in two. As the New York Yearly Meeting explains: "In the early 1820s, there was increasing acrimony between those with conservative Christian beliefs, & those asserting the primacy of the Inward Light." Elias Hicks led the latter group, which became known as "Hicksites," while the more traditional group was deemed "Orthodox." The Hicksites made their home in a brick Meeting House on Hester Street in what is now Chinatown, built in 1819, where they stayed until the opening of the current landmarked Friends Meeting House and Seminary on Rutherford Place facing Stuyvesant Square in 1861. When the two groups of Quakers reunited for the single New York Yearly Meeting in the 1950s, they made their home in that building pictured above.
The Orthodox Quakers, in turn, moved after the schism from Rose Street just north to a new building on Henry Street in the midst of what is now the heavily Asian neighborhood of Two Bridges (though neither bridge existed at the time). In 1840, they sold that meeting house to a Jewish congregation, and the group moved north again to Orchard Street, where they remained for nearly twenty years until they set their sights on a new building in a new neighborhood: Gramercy Park.
Gramercy Park
Even today, the lush and private Gramercy Park, shown here in 2017, is one of the most exclusive enclaves in Manhattan. Residents living nearby maintain the park and receive keys to unlock its gate.
A Google Maps search of all the Manhattan streets mentioned in the prior section would reveal that they're all in Lower Manhattan, most below Canal Street, simply because, at the time, New York was a city entirely clustered at the southern tip of the island.
That started to change in 1811 when city planners first visualized Manhattan's future as a sprawling city encompassing the entire island. The 1811 Commissioners Plan created the now-signature Manhattan grid, with long numbered streets running east to west and wide avenues going north to south. Ask anyone in Manhattan today where they live or for directions, and odds are they'll give you a street number and the name of a nearby avenue. But the commissioners quite literally only drew the grid on paper. They did not build any actual streets. Private developers were left to do the actual building.
Enter Samuel Ruggles. A native of Poughkeepsie, New York, a Yale graduate, and the son of a prominent lawyer, Ruggles would make a name for himself in Manhattan's burgeoning real estate industry. By the 1830s, Ruggles realized that new railroad lines coming into Manhattan would spike land values to unprecedented levels. He quickly bought up over 500 building lots created by the Commissioners' grid. Among them were the lands that would become the Gramercy Park neighborhood.
At the center of that plot was the old 22-acre Gramercy Farm, an indicator of how far away from the city's core the area was at the time. The future neighborhood was also not anywhere close to ready for building. Workers had to level the hills, drain the swamps, and fill the deep ravine at the heart of the land. Ruggles spent $180,000 on a million horsecart loads of earth to level the area for construction.
With the project complete, Ruggles added a few final finishing touches to make the area more appealing. At the center of the neighborhood, he placed a private square, inspired by a similar development built decades earlier by Trinity Church near what is now the Manhattan entrance to the Holland Tunnel. Gramercy Square Park became private property that Ruggles deeded to the owners of the sixty surrounding plots, which sold quickly and remain some of the most valuable real estate in Manhattan.
Ruggles also successfully lobbied for the creation of a new avenue. The portion running north from 20th Street to the square is known as Irving Place and is named for the writer Washington Irving. North of the square for over 100 blocks, the street is known as Lexington Avenue or "Lex" to locals, one of Manhattan's major thoroughfares. Even as builders replaced townhouses with soaring apartment towers, the immediate area around Gramercy Square remained residential, with three limited exceptions. The first two appear below.
The Players Club, left, and the National Arts Club, right, are both National Historic Landmarks on the south side of Gramercy Square Park, yards away from the Meeting House
In 1887, Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes Booth and a famous actor in his own right, purchased the townhouse shown above to the left with the purple flag hanging in front. Originally a private home, Booth transformed the building into The Players Club with the help of architect Stanford White. Booth's goal was to create a professional organization for actors to help elevate their standing in society while providing them a place to gather and a theater library filled with the scripts of great plays. His efforts were successful, and the Players Club remains in operation today. A statue of Booth playing the role of Hamlet stands in the center of Gramercy Square Park today, as seen in the photo at the top of this section.
The more elaborately decorated building on the right was remodeled in the Victorian Gothic style by Calvert Vaux, co-architect of Central Park, in 1874. The townhouse was once the home of New York Governor Samuel Tilden, the 1876 Democratic Nominee for President and a founder of the New York Public Library. In 1906, the National Arts Club purchased the building, which still occupies it today.
Both buildings are New York City and National Historic Landmarks that help tell the story of Manhattan and the nation. But both are predated by the third non-residential structure facing Gramercy Park, the subject of this post: The Friends Meeting House.
The Friends Meeting House
The Meeting House in May 2017 with its prominent "classic pediment" that the landmark nomination form calls the "dominant feature" of the "handsome facade"
As mentioned earlier, the Friends Meetinghouse was constructed in 1859 as a home for the Orthodox wing of the Manhattan Quakers. The congregation outgrew a prior building on Orchard Street and looked to move.
According to the website of the Brotherhood Synagogue, which now owns and uses the building, "The original Quaker group had to obtain special permission to build a non-residential structure on Gramercy Park." They purchased "four lots on Gramercy Park South for $24,000 and commissioned the architectural firm of King & Kellum to construct the new space."
More information on the building's architects and architecture is available below. Still, every source on the Meeting House seems to agree that the Quakers wanted a building that was not only large and functional but also beautiful, not because of any elaborate ornamentation but rather due to a restrained but striking elegance of simplicity. The landmark nomination form calls it an "admirably restrained design." The Quaker community even brought their pews over from Orchard Street to the new Gramercy Park structure, which remains inside today.
Since the building was primarily used as a house of worship by a religious minority, not much has been written or recorded about what happened inside during the 100 years of its Quaker ownership. However, the mere existence of the building, especially one so architecturally notable in such a prominent and well-regarded location, serving as a house of worship for a religious minority, is a testament to New York City's history as a place of religious freedom and multiculturalism.
According to the Brotherhood Synagogue website, the Friends Meeting House was a stop on the Underground Railroad: "Historical records indicate that members of the 20th Street Meeting House sheltered fugitive slaves on the second floor of the building", while members of the congregation "traveled South to open trade schools for freed slaves." A tunnel used to evacuate freedom seekers hidden in the building is still there. It's not surprising that the building was active in the abolitionist community. Quaker Isaac T. Hopper was a noted advocate for the cause who regularly housed runaways at his home less than a mile from the Meeting House.
The Meeting House remained in use for about 100 years, but as time passed and the area around Gramercy Park grew increasingly valuable, the townhouses surrounding it were replaced with towering apartment buildings. As a non-residential building occupying enough space for a large tower, developers tried to purchase the building, especially after the two Quaker sects reunited and moved to the other meetinghouse on Stuyvesant Square. The building was all but abandoned by 1958.
According to the revered New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable, "In 1965, an option was given by the Friends to a developer who planned to demolish the church for a 30‐story apartment house." The neighborhood was not happy about the prospect of losing such a historic and beautiful building. Luckily, the community had a powerful new tool to help them preserve history. That same year, 1965, New York City passed the Landmarks Law in response to the loss of significant buildings, including the iconic Pennsylvania Station. The Landmarks Law called for preservation as a way to: "stabilize and improve property values, foster civic pride, protect and enhance the City's attractions to tourists, strengthen the economy of the City, and promote the use of historic districts, landmarks, interior landmarks, and scenic landmarks for the education, pleasure, and welfare of the people of the City."
With the destruction of the Meeting House looming, the residents of Gramercy Park sprung into action and got the building designated as a New York City Landmark. They acted so fast that the Meeting House appears to have been one of the first 20 buildings designated in the five boroughs. More information on the effort to preserve the building is available in a later section below.
According to Huxtable, the neighbors tried to raise funds to purchase the Meeting House after the designation but were unsuccessful. Instead, the building was sold to the United Federation of Teachers, who hoped to use it but later decided to sell it. In 1974 or 1975, the union sold the Meeting House to the Brotherhood Synagogue for $420,000, a fair and generous price for prime Manhattan real estate. The Brotherhood Synagogue was looking for a new home after an ideological schism among its ranks, making the historic structure born of a Quaker schism over a century earlier the perfect place and continuing the building's history as a beacon of New York City's commitment to religious liberty and multiculturalism.
The Brotherhood Synagogue took to heart the mission and responsibility of occupying a historic building and beautiful work of architecture. Under the pro bono leadership of James Stewart Polshek, then-Dean of Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, the congregation spent hundreds of thousands of dollars painstakingly restoring and upgrading the building, a process that Huxtable approved of, writing that "The result demonstrates the most desirable and least achieved of all preservation objectives: the skillful recycling of an older structure for contemporary purposes with those delicate and difficult compromises that are essential to its continued life."
For years, the Brotherhood Synagogue has made a happy home inside this beautiful landmark structure. It continues to preserve its architecture and history, taking on the role of landmark ownership with great care. Today, the congregation remains open with the vision "To foster a caring, compassionate community for all who choose to engage and participate, and through which our past and present traditions will be carried on to future generations." According to the Brotherhood website, Shabbat services are open to the public every Friday at 6:30 pm and Saturday at 9:30 am.
Architecture
Architect John Kellum, who designed the Meeting House, is also known for his work on the Tweed courthouse in Lower Manhattan, a National Historic Landmark and New York City Landmark
While the Friends Meetinghouse symbolizes New York City's ideals, its primary significance comes from its architecture. A 1964 New York Times article reports, "The 105‐year‐old building on 20th Street was designed by John Kellum, architect. Daniel Cromwell, carpenter, was responsible for the interior woodwork, which has remained intact. Joseph Hillyard, a mason, provided stone walls two feet thick."
Each of those pieces of the building is key to its uniqueness. Still, New York City Landmark designations only cover the exterior of buildings, so much of the documentation on the building has focused on its overall exterior design by architect John Kellum.
Kellum was born in Hempstead on New York's Long Island in 1809. As a young man, he went to Brooklyn, where he worked as a house carpenter and studied architecture. In 1846, he partnered up with another Long Island native working in the building trade in Brooklyn, Gamaliel King, to form the architectural firm of King and Kellum, which lasted until 1860. The pair became known primarily for their commercial work, the most famous still-standing being the Cary Building on Chambers Street downtown, one of the earliest cast-iron structures in the city.
The pair also worked together on the Brooklyn City Hall, now the Borough Hall, the grand public building in downtown Brooklyn, and perhaps their most significant contribution to their home borough. Like many great architects, though, the pair were successful thanks to their patrons, wealthy clients who could afford to realize grand visions.
Kellum had two key patrons in his career. The first was Alexander T. Stewart, the founder of the modern department store. Kellum designed a full-block cast iron store and an elaborate Fifth Avenue mansion for Stewart, neither of which survive today. However, Stewart's original department store, not designed by Kellum, is located just a block from Kellum's Cary Building and directly across the street from Kellum's other most famous work: The Tweed Courthouse, shown at the top of this section. Kellum worked on the project for ten years and got the gig from his other great patron, Wilson G. Hunt, a commercial buildings client of Kellum's who was also on the committee building the new courthouse.
All of that is to say that at the time of the Meeting House's construction in 1859, John Kellum was one of the city's most prominent architects, designing striking and vital buildings for wealthy clients and the government. It's no wonder then that the Quakers wanted his services. But they also wanted a restrained and dignified building rather than something grand or flashy. The landmark plaque near the front entrance now bears Kellum's clear instructions: a building "exactly suited for a Friends Meeting, entirely plain, neat and chaste, of good taste, but avoiding all useless ornament." Kellum delivered spectacularly, creating what the retired editor of Artitechrual Forum told the Landmarks Preservation Committee was "an aesthetic rarity for New York or any other city: not pretentious but direct, reticent, of good proportions, and superior to many a more ambitious effort then or now."
The Meeting House is described in the designation form as "a restrained and successful example of Anglo-Italianate architecture." Huxtable writes that it "is in what the Victorians called the Italianate style—a melange of near‐Renaissance motifs." Both sources agree that a few specific architectural features, outlined below, give the building special significance.
The building's most dominant feature is the classic pediment crowning its roof—Huxtable lists pediments among the most recognizable features of the Italianate style. At the same time, the angular nature of the pediment highlights the "clean-cut lines" that the designation form points out. The pediment has also been described as "beautifully proportioned." The wide arch under the pediment echoes the arches that top the windows.
Those windows are also one of the most important features. They are described as "stately" in the designation form, while Huxtable calls them "tall, clear windows that run nearly full building height."
The pediment is echoed again over the front door. This photo also highlights the front facade's two-foot-thick Dorchester olive stone walls, which give the Meeting House much of its beauty and what the designation form calls its "sound construction." Another source describes this scene as gaining "a dignified richness from the contrast between plain wall surfaces and the arched pediment that is supported on consoles over the wide central doorway."
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