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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
Fort Tryon Park and the Cloisters
International House
Riverside Church
Museum of the City of New York
The Asia Society
The Rockefeller University
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
United Nations
Greenacre Park
Museum of Modern Art
Rockefeller Center
Judson Memorial Church and Judson Hall
Chase Manhattan Plaza
26 Broadway, Former Headquarters of the Standard Oil Company
About the Authors
Rockefeller New York

A tour by Henry Hope Reed
Photographs by Esther Bubley

JUDSON MEMORIAL CHURCH AND JUDSON HALL

Washington Square South at Thompson Street

Judson Memorial Church and Judson Hall and Tower were built in 1892 on the designs of McKim, Mead & White. John D. Rockefeller, Sr. was the chief benefactor in the 1880s and 1890s, who made its construction possible.

The story begins with Edward Judson (1844-1913), a Baptist minister who gave up a prosperous parish in Orange, New Jersey, to minister to the new Americans who then filled the area south of here between the two rivers. In 1875 he became the pastor of the Berea Baptist Church at 117 West 15th Street. He lived at 35 Washington Square West. One of the objects of his mission was to have a splendid church. "If I had my way," he said, "I would put the most beautiful churches among the homes of the poor, so that it would be only a step from the squalor of the tenement house . . ." This was his vision. It would not be just an ordinary church but an institutional church, with all the facilities and activities of a settlement house.

The elder Rockefeller, a Baptist communicant all his life who even taught Sunday school, had the Baptist Church as his first charity. He would visit Baptist churches and meet their pastors; in this way he came to know of Judson and his work. In 1887, when the pastor took up a campaign to build a new church building, he naturally turned to the philanthropist who was, by then, among his largest contributors.

It should be pointed out that the church was not named for him but for his father, Adinoram Judson (1788-1850), graduate of Brown University. The elder Judson was one of those Protestant missionaries who fanned out around the globe from the eastern United States. In 1813 he and his wife sailed to Burma. Very much part of his mission was to translate the Bible into Burmese. Having accomplished that, he produced a Burmese-English, English-Burmese dictionary with the help of his wife. His son, instead of following his father abroad, turned to the home mission.

The style of the church is Lombardo-Romanesque. New Englanders, familiar with the Catholic churches of Eastern Massachusetts, will recognize the style, the favorite of the architectural firm, Maginnis & Walsh. McKim, Mead & White were already the city's leading firm and, as masters of the eclectic, could handle the style. It will be noticed that the brick is the long thin Roman kind which was a favorite of theirs, also to be seen in the Century Association on West 43rd Street, built about the same time.

Artists made their contribution. La Farge designed glass windows which are still in the church, and Herbert Adams, sculptor of the bronze figure of William Cullen Bryant in Bryant Park, did a relief for the chancel.

From Washington Square the tour goes to Broadway on West 4th Street. The stretch that follows is long, continuing on Broadway all the way to Liberty or Pine Streets. It then goes east to the Chase Manhattan Plaza.

For information on the Judson Memorial Church and Edward Judson, I am indebted to Joan Jacobs Brurnberg's Mission For Life (New York University Press, 1984).

Judson Memorial Church with its tower.

Judson Memorial Church seen through the Washington Arch in Washington Square.

Left: Doorway of Judson Memorial Church. Right: Classical detail in terracotta on Judson Memorial Church with elaborate wrought iron window grille.


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