New York Renaissance.

One of my favorite places in the world is indeed New York City. It is not just another soulless metropolis filled with high-rise buildings and very little history linking it to the past. New York is a vibrating and ever-changing modern city - probably the first one in the world, surely on pair with London. What in my opinion makes New York even more fascinating is its link with the past. Although one has to say that the skyscraper was born in Chicago, it is also true that New York improved it. The majority of Manhattan’s high-rise buildings are in the beautiful Classical Revival or Gothic Revival style of the late 19th century and early 20th century. Even more skyscrapers are grand examples of Art Deco architecture - how not to think of the Chrysler Building, and many others both in Lower and Midtown Manhattan? However, what I truly find fascinating about New York, and the reason why it is unique among many an uninteresting modern metropolises, is that every so often, testimonies of its relatively short history still exist. One thinks of 18th century St. Paul’s Chapel, but one also thinks of the era that actually transformed New York into the world’s greatest city: the Gilded Age.

I have been writing rather extensively about the Renaissance in my previous articles. The Renaissance can be considered as the turning point of modern philanthropy. The great families of Rome and Florence first realised before the rest of Europe that power is not only shown in one’s military strength - soft power became the main diplomatic instrument of the Italian Renaissance. It did not just see great works of art being commissioned for private use - art was being commissioned for public spaces, churches and chapels were being funded by rich Roman and Florentine families for the use of the general public. The Medici in Florence were funding grand churches in the city while they were developing modern trading and banking. Many other families in Rome were doing exactly the same; while the Popes were also opening the first public museums, the Capitoline Museums, they were also investing in the discovery of archeology. At the same time, they were also investing in building hospitals and infrastructure for use of the general public. The Italian Renaissance invented modern diplomacy and the local use of soft power to enchant and appease the people.

What does this process remind us of? Nowhere in 19th century Western Europe, shortly after the wider establishment of the national state, could be a free ground for the creation of a new yet old system - there simply was no room. European social structures had been defined for centuries - New York was the solution. During the 19th century, New York City adopted exactly the same system and reinvented modern philanthropy as well as the very concept of soft power.

Between the late 18th century and early 19th century, New York became a well-established port town on the Atlantic coast, with very strong links to Britain, both before and after the revolution. With the dawn of the industrial revolution, many historical New York families, later described as the New York aristocracy, began to establish themselves economically. Soon, their wealth was exceeding that of the richest European families, the Vanderbilts, Morgans, and Astors are only a few among all these names. The question they posed themselves was “now that we have made money, how do we become old money?” - the great families of the greatest city in the new land of the free wanted to recreate a hierarchical system of social classes, and soon realised that the Renaissance system was the perfect solution.

Up until the first half of the 19th century, Lower Manhattan was at the heart of New York City. What is now Midtown Manhattan and the Upper East Side was literally countryside. There were a few farms left from colonial times here and there, but soon with the economic growth of the city, people began to move uptown. Midtown Manhattan became increasingly populated, popular housing was being built for the working classes, but the new-old American money was being invited to move uptown, while new townhouses and inviting churches were being built there. Soon, Midtown Manhattan became the very heart of the new 19th century metropolis. Anyone who has visited New York would not recognise what Midtown Fifth Avenue would have looked like towards the end of the 19th century. The great mansions in the French-Chateaux style or Neo-Georgian architecture of the great families of the time were disseminated along it. Among them were the charming mansions of the Vanderbilts and the Astors - the Frick mansion, now a gallery, still survives further on, by the Central Park. Fifth Avenue also became the example of how the New York princes were imitating the Florentine and Roman princes. Not only were they trying to marry into British and to a little extent Italian and French nobility, they also soon realised that if they wanted to survive, they had to fund beauty for the masses as well. The beautiful concept of sharing one’s means for the general public arrived to America. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was funded in 1870 - with the great contribution of Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, the New York Library opened in 1895, the New York Cancer Hospital opened in 1885, both made possible through the great generosity of the Astor family. Outside New York, other examples are the Isabella Gardner House in Boston and the American Academy in Rome, where a plot of land had been purchased by J.P. Morgan who visited the site himself. As the Medici and other families had villas in the countryside, so New York aristocracy also went for the same ideal. New York's upper crust chose Newport, Rhode Island as their country escape from the bustling life of the city. Back in town, J.P. Morgan built himself a large library, decorated with beautiful art collected in Europe, and with frescoes inspired by those of Raphael in Rome, these were not modern day wolves, but cultured patrons of culture, people who treasured beauty above all.

As philanthropy established itself in this Gilded Age - not only were these families attaining power through the appreciation of the beauty of the arts, something money could not buy, but they were also essential in one further endeavour. New York aristocracy was overall Christian, and not just that, it was Episcopalian and Episcopalians loved religion to be done properly and their churches to be real temples of beauty. The greatest architects and artists of the time were being commissioned the execution of these temples; from Richard Upjohn to Ralph Adams Cram. Many of them exist because New York was a strong loyalist outpost and thus maintained a strong connection to Anglicanism. Among them, the most renowned Episcopal churches of Manhattan are: the cathedral of Saint John the Divine, and the churches of Trinity Wall Street, Grace Church Broadway, Saint Bartholomew Park Avenue, Saint James Madison Avenue, and Saint Thomas Fifth Avenue. Anglican temples that could rival London's. The New American Renaissance was complete - Manhattan was the new Florence, New York was the new Rome. This is the New York Renaissance.

The greatest of the Gilded Age temples is probably the cathedral of Saint John the Divine. In 1887, Henry Codman Potter, Bishop of New York, called for the construction of a new cathedral. Subsequently, a Byzantine-Romanesque design by Cristopher Grant LaFarge and George Lewis Heins was accepted in 1889, on land purchased by J.P. Morgan north of Central Park. Work on the cathedral was delayed until 1909, when it recommenced under the supervision of Ralph Adams Cram in the Gothic Revival style. This enormous cathedral was supposed to be built in the Medieval fashion so that it could give jobs to deprived people in the Harlem area, to this day this magnificent church has not been completed - it is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world, and it is crowned by a series of chapels inspired by the seven largest ethnic groups present in New York at the time of construction. It is a testament to the Gilded Age genius.

Trinity Wall Street is the oldest church foundation in New York, the present building dates to the 1840s, construction began in 1839 and was completed by 1846 under the supervision of architect Richard Upjohn. It is one of North America’s earliest examples of Gothic Revival architecture and at the time of construction, it was the tallest church in America, making its spire a welcoming beacon for ships sailing into New York Harbour. The great reredos, altar, and candelabras were left in memory of William Backhouse Astor Sr. of New York, making of Trinity yet another testimony of the New York Renaissance.

Not too far from Trinity, on Broadway, is Grace Church. It began as a chapel of Trinity in 1808, in 1834 it moved uptown and in 1843, a young architect, James Renwick Jr. was commissioned the construction of a new Gothic Revival church building. The church was completed and consecrated by 1846 in the French Gothic Revival style, the church’s wooden spire was replaced in 1881 with a marble spire also designed by Renwick. The lovely church was deemed at the time, New York’s prettiest and most fashionable church. In its garden, by the rectory, is a Roman urn found during construction of the American church in Rome - its sisters are at Catharine Lorillard Wolfe’s mansion in Newport and in the garden of the American church in Rome. This is yet another important chapter in New York’s philanthropic history.

Saint James’ church on Madison Avenue is an important example of the history of Midtown churches, having been funded in 1810 as a summer chapel in what was then the countryside north of Manhattan, what we call now the Upper East Side. As the city grew, Saint James’ changed and was rebuilt in 1884-5 in the Romanesque Revival style. In 1924, it was reconfigured masterfully by Ralph Adams Cram, in the current Gothic Revival style. Cram’s Great Reredos, one of the finest painted and gilded wooden altarpieces of the 20th century is the church’s crown jewel. This church was central to the life of the New York aristocracy of the 19th century and eventually it became a vital part of the very history of the Upper East Side.

Saint Bartholomew’s on Park Avenue ought to be mentioned in this article, because of its long standing connections with the Vanderbilt family. The congregation began in 1835, while a first major church was built between 1872 and 1876, by John Renwick, in the Romanesque Revival style, as a memorial to William H. Vanderbilt. A second church was erected between 1916-7 in the Byzantine Revival style by Bertram Goodhue, another great ecclesiastical architect of the Gilded Age - he preserved the memorial Vanderbilt porch, but built a new beautiful church with precious marbles, a tiled-patterned dome and rich mosaics, as a last testimony of the great age of American philanthropy.

The last church on this article is perhaps the greatest testament to the Gilded Age of American ecclesial architecture. Saint Thomas’ church on Fifth Avenue began in 1823, when members of three Episcopal parishes in Lower Manhattan moved uptown, among them was William Backhouse Astor. Saint Thomas’ was incorporated in 1824. The first church building opened in 1826 in the Greenwich Village and was described as the “best specimen of Gothic in the city” - it was designed by Joseph R. Brady and John McVickar of Columbia College. After a fire in 1851, the church was immediately rebuilt in 1852. While the Greenwich Village had become less fashionable, a new church was being built on the corner of 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue, based upon a design by Richard Upjohn and his son Richard Mitchell Upjohn. The third Saint Thomas became Midtown’s most fashionable church - it towered over a neighborhood dominated by the great mansions of Manhattan’s upper crust. It featured a 260 ft high tower and beautiful murals by John LaFarge. Saint Thomas also became the set of America’s fanciest weddings, including that of Consuelo Vanderbilt to Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marblorough.

Sadly, this beautiful church was destroyed by a fire in 1905, but by 1906 a new church had been designed by a magic duo: Ralph Adams Cram and Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue - who were to the Episcopal Church by then what Michelangelo and Raphael were to Rome. They designed what is probably one of America’s, if not the world’s, grandest Gothic temples - crowned by a great reredos designed by Goodhue and Lee Lawrie. The church was completed and consecrated in 1916, at the end of the great age of American philanthropy. Will we ever see such a time of great cultural sensitivity and generosity? Will beauty ever be again more popular than other forms of entertainment? We give thanks for the kind spirits of the past who made these temples possible, through their love for beauty and the arts. These were philanthropists who commissioned art, lived in modern palazzos and had country mansions, they also commissioned glorious temples of learning as well as temples of God, for the use of all, in the great style of the New York Renaissance.