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II

With the coming of Theodore Cuyler a new era opened up for the old Market Street church. Two years before Dr. Cuyler had spoken at a large temperance meeting in Tripler Hall, together with General Houston, Henry Ward Beecher, Horace Mann and other celebrities. It was his first public address in a city that was to know much of him.

In 1853 Mr. Cuyler was called and installed by the South Classis of New York, November 13, 1853. He says that while walking along Henry Street Judge Hoxie said to Mr. Lyles: "If our young brother will come and work in the Market Street church we might do something yet."

Cuyler lived at Pike and Madison Streets and later in Rutgers Street. His salary was $1,500, advanced later to $2,500. The church building was painted, and in 1855 a new roof was put on at the expense of the pewholders.

Opposite the church on the northeast corner was a large and select private school. At 11 Market Street later was a smaller one, headed by a German patriot, whose son-in-law was one of the great generals during the Rebellion.

In his address in the church at the Eightieth Anniversary, Dr. Cuyler called it "fighting the adversary of souls and geography," for even in Dr. Ferris's time there were indications of waning strength because of "the continued emigration of the more substantial class of church members from the down-town districts of the city uptown."

Cuyler at Market Street

But the indefatigable Cuyler postponed the evil day, and for seven years of intensest activity he remained in Market Street.

To quote Dr. Cuyler: "I looked around me and saw there were a good many substantial families that could support a church and East Broadway swarmed with young men."

"Here was the lord of the manor, the nephew of Colonel Rutgers, Wm. B. Crosby. What a devoted Christian he was. His good old gray head moved up to the pew every Sunday, rain or shine. There was a deacons' pew, and in the center sat the best-known man in New York, Judge Joseph Hoxie. When we said the creed and nobody joined he shouted it, and in song his voice was heard above the choir. There sat Jacob Westervelt, the mayor of New York, and he boasted that he was the only member of the Dutch Church who could read a Dutch Bible."

Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

The galleries were packed with young men. One, a young Irish boy, Robert McBurney, became the great secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association. Charles Briggs was another young member, and around him later raged the bitterest theological controversy of the century.

During the summer of 1854 the service was changed to 4 P. M., 7:30 being resumed in September.

In 1855 the seats in the gallery were changed from four rows to three rows, and the infant school was held in the "scholars' gallery" of the church. The low seats are still in the second gallery.

A stove was put in, too, as the heating was not satisfactory.

In 1855, A. D. Stowell came as Bible class teacher at a salary of $12 per month.

Dr. Cuyler rightly referred to it as a busy old hive, for from Market Street church emanated some of the greatest religious movements of the century.

Howard Crosby, son of William B. Crosby, and brought up in the Market Street church, was the first president of the Young Men's Christian Association. Cuyler became interested in it the second year of its existence in New York, and during his long lifetime he never ceased to work for it. But if the church had done nought else than bring Robert McBurney to the Association it would have been amply repaid. The master spirit in the Association for thirty years McBurney's name is written in golden letters in the city's history. Morris K. Jesup and William E. Dodge, life-long friends of the church, were early Association supporters.

A work typical of Market Street church was the Fulton Street prayer-meeting, started by Jeremiah C. Lamphier, who sang in the church choir. Dr. Cuyler credits this with being the first move in the tremendous revival that from 1856 to 1858 swayed the city, and went on to other cities, gathering momentum. Cuyler says: "In three or four weeks the revival so absorbed the city that business men crowded into the churches from 12 to 3 each day, and when Horace Greeley was asked to start a new philanthropic enterprise he said: 'The city is so absorbed with this revival that it has no time for anything else.'"

Market Street church gathered in 150 new members, and 1859 was one of the glorious ones in the history of the church.

Mr. Lamphier died December 26, 1898.

In the Temperance cause, Dr. Cuyler was also a ceaseless worker. From 1851 to 1857 he was in close alliance with Neal Dow, then at the height of his fame as a prohibition advocate.

Another organization that had an earnest supporter in Dr. Cuyler was the Christian Endeavor Society, tho Cuyler gives all the credit for its fatherhood to Rev. F. E. Clarke.

In a day when such things were not common Market Street church got deeply into matters civic. "The most hideous sink of iniquity and loathsome degradation was in the then famous Five Points," Baxter, Worth, Mulberry, Park Streets, not far from the church. An old building, honeycombed with vaults and secret passages, called the Old Brewery, was the center of a locality that boldly flouted the police. Indeed, for years the Old Brewery was a harbor of refuge for any criminal, for the law never reached him there, nor were the Five Points ever a safe place to walk thru. At night no one dared be seen there. For some years the Five Points had played a physical part in the elections, and many a riot had its inception there.

Then the city put thru Worth Street, formerly known as Anthony Street, after a Rutgers, and the Old Brewery Mission was establisht there. Thru Mrs. Pease, a member of the Market Street church, whose husband was the brave projector of the Five Points House of Industry, the church became interested in improving conditions. When Mr. Pease went south, his place was taken by Benjamin R. Barlow, one of the Market Street elders.

In his autobiography, Dr. Cuyler tells how he "used to make nocturnal explorations of some of those satanic quarters" to keep public interest awake in the mission work at the Five Points. New Yorkers who remember the House of Industry of thirty years ago and who now look at Mulberry Bend Park may well thank the old Market Street church that the Cow Bay, Bandit's Roost, the Old Brewery and Cut Throat Alley are things of the past, and that the Five Points are known to this later day only as a name. No second Charles Dickens will cross the ocean to tell us that "all that is loathsome, drooping and decayed is here."