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Staten Island House renovated 97 Kitchen for Cooking Classes 99 Pulpit 104 Back of Pulpit 107

I

If there be one thing certain about New York it is that nothing remains unchanged. Not only do public works like the bridges change the face of things, but private activity effaces great structures to build up still greater ones. This march of progress is as relentless as a modern army, levelling all before it.

In other lands churches have been spared tho other buildings went down, but even these in New York have disappeared, whole districts being deliberately deserted because churches were no longer able to maintain themselves there financially. This is especially true of the great down-town section of Manhattan, the Old New York, in which only two churches remain that have stood unchanged for a century. Trinity church let old St. John's go, and sixty churches have disappeared in forty years on the lower East Side alone. We lose much when old landmarks go, when we can not make history more vivid for our children by pointing out where the great men of another day worshipt, men of a day when other public assemblies were rare, and the church was the center that radiated influence. The old building is of value because of the living beings associated with it that were the life of the community.

New York has hardly appreciated what its great families have meant for it in the past. The members of the Rutgers family, for instance, always had a noble share in the day and generation in which they lived. Their ancestor came over in the early days from Holland, spent some time about Albany, and then came to New York, branching out till Rutgers bouweries and Rutgers breweries were found in more than one place.

A Rutgers was on the jury in the great Zenger trial that establisht the freedom of the colonial press,—"the germ of American freedom." The Rutgers were Sons of Liberty and the Rutgers farm near Golden Hill was one of their meeting places. A Rutgers was a member of the New York Provincial Congress and also of the Stamp Act Congress. Alexander Hamilton was engaged in a famous case when a Rutgers defended herself against a Tory who had taken possession of her property during the Revolution.

It was a Rutgers who drained the marshes west of the old Collect Pond and so laid the foundations for the Lispenard fortunes: a Lispenard married a fair daughter of his neighbor Rutgers. That stream still runs into the Broadway Subway at Canal Street apparently uncontrollable.

One Rutgers fell in the Battle of Long Island, and while the old father died in Albany, the British revenged themselves on the younger brother by making a hospital of his fine house in New York. The owner kept on fighting for freedom during the whole Revolutionary War, distinguishing himself at White Plains.

This was Henry Rutgers, in whom culminated many of the finest characteristics of a noble ancestry. His breadth of view in an age not quite so broad, is well shown in his attitude towards churches and schools. When he decided to open up his farm in the Seventh Ward for building purposes he gave land at Oliver and Henry Streets, at Market and Henry Streets and at Rutgers and Henry Streets for churches, and there was more for the asking, tho only the Baptists, the Dutch Reformed and the Presbyterians took advantage of the offer. The Rutgers Street site became the birthplace of the Rutgers Presbyterian church, beginning May 13, 1798, in a frame building 36×64. In 1841 the present stone church was built, and in 1862, as did others, this organization moved uptown. A Mr. Briggs, who was holding the property for a Protestant denomination, finally tired of waiting and sold the building to the Roman Catholic church, in whose hands it remains.

In 1806 Rutgers gave the land for the second free school, and he succeeded Governor Clinton in 1828 as president of the Free School Society. Before that day education was not a state matter, but left to private enterprise, and the free schools then establisht were for the poor. Rutgers more than once paid salaries and other school bills out of his own pocket. He was a Regent of the University of the State of New York for twenty-four years, and a Trustee of Princeton.

Rutgers was not above mixing in with the political life of his time: he was a member of the legislature four times and took a prominent part in the election of Thomas Jefferson as President of the United States.

In 1811 he raised funds for the first Tammany Hall, then a benevolent organization.

During the War of 1812, Rutgers presided at a large mass meeting calling for the defense of New York when the port was blockaded and it seemed as if the British would attack it. He was a large contributor to the fund from which forts were hurriedly erected to keep the enemy out.

Rutgers was a member of a committee of correspondence formed in 1819 to check slavery. He lived to see the day, in 1827, when slavery was abolisht in New York State.

His services to the Dutch church and his munificence brought about a change of name of the college at New Brunswick from Queens to Rutgers College. It is true the sum given was only $5,000 and Rutgers was one of the richest men in New York. In our day when only billions seem to count we may well hark back to the days of simpler things.

For many years Henry Rutgers gave a cake and a book to every boy who called on him on New Year's Day. The children gathered about his door and he made an address "of a religious character."

Colonel Rutgers lived in "a large, superbly furnished mansion," on Rutgers Place, "for many years a capitol of fashion, where met all the leaders of the day." Here was given "the most notable reception of the time to General Washington and Colonel Willett," after the latter's return from his mission to the Creek Indians, the most powerful confederacy then on our borders. Here, also, in 1824, Lafayette was entertained "like a prince," so the great Frenchman said.

The house was built in 1755 by the Colonel's father, with brick brought from Holland. It stood on Monroe Street till 1865. But it was none too fine for