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West Presbyterian Church (New York City), United States

Category: Attraction

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54 West 42nd Street
New York
NY 10036
USA

New York, United States Print route » N40° 45' 14.868" W73° 58' 56.784"   (40.75413, -73.98244) Start navigation »

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West Presbyterian Church was a congregation in New York City located first on Bleecker Street (as North Presbyterian Church), then on Carmine Street, and then on the north side of West 42nd Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues. It later merged into the West-Park Presbyterian congregation, extant.

West Presbyterian
was founded in 1829 in Greenwich Village as the North Presbyterian Church. Within a few years [in the late 1830s] it changed its name to West Presbyterian Church. In 1860, following the northward movement of Manhattan’s population, [the congregation] was relocated to West 42nd Street [between 5th and 6th Avenues] and soon built a Victorian Gothic-style edifice, completed in
1865. West Presbyterian counted a number of distinguished citizens among its membership, including Russell Sage, Jay Gould, and Alfred H. Smith, and by 1890 had become known as the “millionaires’ gate to heaven.” By the early twentieth century, commercialization of its midtown location led to the displacement of the area’s residential population and the loss of many of West Presbyterian’s members, including the prominent men mentioned above after an internal dispute. As a consequence, [it and Park Presbyterian Church on Amsterdam Avenue and West 86th Street] began competing for members and decided to merge their memberships, forming the West-Park Presbyterian Church. The deal between the two organizations included the construction of a new church in Washington Heights at 175th [sic; 174th] Street and Wadsworth Avenue, called the Fort Washington Presbyterian Church, which remained affiliated with West Park until 1923.[abridged]

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