Cultural Diversity, Ethnic Tensions, and Economic Marginality in an Early Bronx Settlement — Part 1
By Marian Swerdlow
The Village of Morrisania, founded in 1848, was the first area west of the Bronx River to be densely settled in what today is the Bronx. [1] Despite this historic significance, almost nothing has been published about it in the past century, possibly because of the scarcity of resources in the community that is today in the ancient Village’s footprint. [2]
Map of the Village of Morrisania, 1853. Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, The New York Public Library. "Map of the lower village of Morrisania 1853" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1853. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/d88fad50-e2bb-0132-8d8b-58d385a7bbd0
The Village was neither pastoral nor bucolic. Among its problems were scarce resources and ethnic conflicts. A discussion of its churches, their congregations, and some leading congregants, seems a good way to begin to explore the cultural diversity, the social tensions it engendered, and the economic fragility of this mostly forgotten settlement.
Part I of this article starts with a brief history and description of the Village, and talks about its Roman Catholic, Methodist and Congregational churches. Part II will discuss three other Village churches, and conclude by relating the stories of all six through the twentieth century to the present day.
In 1848, the Village of Morrisania lay within Westchester County. In 1874, when the 23rd Ward in which it was located was annexed to New York City, the Village ceased to exist. However, most of the southwest Bronx has continued to be known as “Morrisania.”
Morrisania Village, 1861, looking north from what is now Washington Avenue and East 163rd Street. Courtesy Lehman College Library, CUNY Special Collections.
The Village covered roughly 200 acres. Its northern boundary was a low stone wall slightly north of what is today East 170th Street. To the east, Boston Road was its border, and its western border was the Mill Brook, today’s Brook Avenue. The short stretch of East 163rd Street between today’s Brook and Third Avenues formed its southern boundary. After roads were laid out, and land set aside for a park, a school, and other amenities, the remainder was divided into 175 one-acre parcels for sale as residences. All were sold within months.
The first Village settlers included some of British birth or ancestry, who mainly belonged to low church Protestant denominations and German immigrants, including Roman Catholics, Lutherans and other Protestant denominations. Finally, there were Irish immigrants, almost entirely Roman Catholics. All began attempts to establish congregations shortly after settlement. Initially, most met in homes or rented spaces, as it took some time to accumulate the funds to build religious edifices. Most had ongoing and related problems of membership and finances.
Saint Augustine’s Roman Catholic Church
The first St. Augustine's church is the smaller structure to the right. The second St. Augustine's church, with the steeple, is to the left. From John Gilmary Shea, editor, The Catholic Churches of New York City (New York: Lawrence G. Goulding & Company, 1878), 194. Accessed October 25, 2019, https://archive.org/details/catholicchurches00shea/page/194.
Before the establishment of the Village of Morrisania, Catholics in that part of Westchester County attended St. Paul’s Church in Harlem. [3] In 1849, the parish of St. Augustine, which included all of Morrisania, Tremont, and West Farms, was created. That year, the parish celebrated its first mass in a private home. In 1850, the parish bought a one acre parcel of land on the northeast corner of Franklin Avenue and Jefferson Place for $12,000 and built a small wooden church. [4] In 1853, a new Roman Catholic parish, Immaculate Conception, was formed in neighboring Melrose. Its parish priest was a German immigrant, while Saint Augustine’s priests were of Irish background. Subsequently, Morrisania Villagers of German origin preferred to travel to Melrose and be ministered to by their countrymen. The remaining Saint Augustine parishioners were almost entirely Irish-Americans. In 1855, the church leaders began planning a larger brick church with a spire 125 feet high alongside the existing wood church. In 1860, the church was finished, and now seated a thousand people. [5] The former church building was converted into a parish school in 1864, with a teacher and two assistants, but it was up to the pupils to buy their own books. However, the school soon closed “for lack of means.” [6] Despite being among the financially strongest Village churches, St. Augustine’s still could not sustain a school.
The Centenary Methodist Church
Former Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church, ca. 2018, courtesy of the author.
The original population of the Village of Morrisania included a significant number of people of British ancestry, mainly native born, and members of such low church Protestant denominations as Congregational, Methodist and Presbyterian. In contrast to the Roman Catholics, they were teetotalers, and their worship centered around the Bible.
One of the earliest of their congregations was the Methodist Episcopal Church of Morrisania, incorporated in 1850. Its original church was near 6th Street and Fordham Avenue. [7] In 1865, the congregation purchased a larger lot at the southeast corner of 4th Street and Washington Avenue for $50,000, and began building a more spacious sanctuary the following year. The congregation renamed itself the “Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church,” because their church was dedicated in 1866, the centenary of the first Methodist society meeting in New York. It opened in November 1868. [8] However, to save money, the builders had used cheap concrete brick. It proved inadequate for a building of its size, and after only a few months, the tower and spire collapsed. This left the church unusable. [9]
Faced with the prospect of repairs costing $400,000, the congregation took the desperate step of mortgaging its property to the New York Methodist Conference. [10] The original tower and buttresses were removed and replaced with “heavier and firmer” structures. The steeple, however, was never rebuilt. In 1869, the church was ready for worship again and rededicated. {11]
The church’s finances continued to be shaky during the entire lifetime of Morrisania Village. The New York City Methodist Episcopal hierarchy blamed this on the large number of breweries in vicinity of the church, and the introduction of “a foreign element in preponderating numbers, for whom the beer gardens and saloons possess stronger attractions than the house of God.” It reported that the church “resolved to put its hope in the Sunday School,” whose 250 scholars included “a large number . . . from godless homes, some from lager beer saloons, and several from Roman Catholic households.” [12]
The church may have been poor, but at least one of its members was not: Chauncey Smith, a lawyer, author of many texts of business law, and agent of many financial companies. [13] Smith was a good example of the Villagers who were native born, of British ancestry, and low church Protestant. He moved to Morrisania Village around 1856, and opened an office there. According to Thomas Scharf’s History of Westchester County, Smith was “. . . an old-school type of Christian gentleman, highly respected in all the walks of life, and active in the true interests of the society and community in which he lived . . .” [14]
Smith was at once a leader of the Morrisania Temperance Alliance, which reviled the use of alcohol, and of the Westchester Bible Society, which sought to disseminate the Bible to Catholics, which was tantamount to attempting to convert them to low church Protestantism. The president of that Society wrote that immigrants entering the U.S. brought “conflicting moral elements [which] must be speedily brought under the conservative power of the Bible,” a sentiment surely shared by Smith and many more of Morrisania’s low church Protestants. He was a fan of baseball, which Villagers of Smith’s ilk considered clean-cut entertainment, accompanied by no drink stronger than lemonade. He also supported the contemporary educational reform movement, which promoted public education for all students and not exclusively the rich, and improvements in teacher training and curriculum. He was a Republican, a party that strongly opposed immigration, but also opposed slavery. During the Civil War, he opened his home to Union soldiers on leave. [15]
The First Congregational Church of Morrisania
In what is considered an authoritative modern account of the history of the Bronx, Evelyn Gonzalez states, “In 1875, Mott Haven, Melrose, and the Morrisania — Hunts Point region were the most populated communities of the city’s newest territory . . . Yet only in Melrose were there African American institutions.” [16] Schwartz, who discusses ethnicity and religious institutions in Morrisania extensively, makes no mention of any Black churches whatsoever. [17] However, in The Northern Borough; A History of the Bronx, Lloyd Ultan writes, “The First Congregational Church of Morrisania, however, was begun in 1851 as an integrated institution, with those of both European and African backgrounds among its founders. The classes in its church school were filled with members of both races.” [18] Later, he adds “In the 1870s, the Second Congregational Church of Morrisania was formed by several blacks [sic] who left the First Congregational Church.” [19] Unfortunately, Ultan does not give the location of the First Congregational Church, nor does his book contain citations or footnotes. However, the Beers map of the Town of Morrisania shows a building labeled “Cong. Ch.” on the west side of Washington Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets. [20]
F.W. Beers map of the Town of Morrisania, ca. 1860 - 1865, showing a Congregational Church on Washington Avenue between what are now East 165th and 166th Streets. Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, The New York Public Library. "Map of the town of Morrisania, Westchester Co. N.Y." The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1860. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/55f6c5e0-16f8-0134-5737-00505686a51c.
According to the Morrisania and Tremont directory of 1871-2, that was the location of the First Congregational Church. [19] Its original congregation had fewer than fifteen people. Following the pattern common to Village churches, for its first couple of years, the tiny congregation met in a rented room. But by 1853, the congregation began to meet in the completed part of its church under construction on Washington Avenue. In December 1864, the “commodious and beautiful . . . house of worship,” which could seat 432, was dedicated. The directory article attributed to “M.F.” reports:
It is neatly and tastefully finished inside and has the largest and finest organ of any church in the place if not the county. The singing is good and the preaching services such as to attract audiences respectable in numbers in the mornings and very large attendance in the evenings.
However, the article also says that the church has suffered from large losses in members, including to the Second Congregational Church, which it notes as a “colored” church, in Melrose. The same article reports that, at the time of its publication, The First Congregational Church had 87 members, and an enrollment of 173 in its Sunday School. [20]
Part II of this article will discuss three other Village churches, and summarize how all six churches, and their congregations, have developed and changed up through today.
Marian Swerdlow was born and raised in Morrisania, the Bronx. She is the author of Underground Woman: My Four Years as a New York City Subway Conductor (Temple University Press:1998). She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University, and her work has appeared in Review of Radical Political Economics and Gender and Society, among other publications. Her most recent publication is "The Sacco and Vanzetti of the Bronx," Work History News, Winter/Spring 2025.
[1] This introductory overview of the founding and history of the Village of Morrisania is based on Joel Schwartz, Community Building on the Bronx Frontier, Morrisania 1848 - 1975, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1975 passim; Thomas Scharf, History of Westchester County, (Philadelphia: L. E. Preston & Co, 1886) passim; and Lloyd Ultan, The Northern Borough (New York: The Bronx County Historical Society, 2005)130, 137, 142-3.
[2] Unfortunately, the value of even Ultan’s brief discussion of the Village’s history (op. cit.) is limited by the book’s complete absence of footnotes or citations. Additional publications that mention the Village include Randall Comfort, History of Bronx Borough, City of New York (New York: Northside News Press, 1906) and Evelyn Gonzalez, The Bronx (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). Comfort’s work is not only long out of print, it is anecdotal and more lore than history. Gonzalez’s account is drawn almost entirely from the Schwartz dissertation (op. cit.) and is very brief: four paragraphs and an additional four sentences.
[3] John Gilmary Shea, ed., The Catholic Churches of New York City, With Sketches of Their History and Lives of the Present Pastors: With an Introduction on the Early History of Catholicity on the Island, and Lives of the Most Reverend Archbishops and Bishops (New York: L. Goulding, 1878), 195-201, accessed January 26, 2024, https://archive.org/details/catholicchurches00shea.
[4] All prices are given in their present day equivalent; 125th Anniversary Souvenir Book, 1974, accessed March 12, 2024, https://d2wldr9tsuuj1b.cloudfront.net/10193/documents/2015/6/Scan_Doc0001.pdf.
[5] John Gilmary Shea, ed., op. cit.; 125th Anniversary Souvenir Book, op. cit.
[6] Ibid.; John Gilmary Shea, ed., op. cit.
[7] All locations are given in the names the streets had in the Village, except where otherwise stated. In the Village, what is now East 163rd Street was First Street, so to arrive at the street’s number today, add 162 to its former number. The names of avenues are the same, except Third Avenue, which was then named Fordham Avenue.
[8] Public Notice Regarding Section 106 Review of the Proposed Supportive and Affordable Housing Project at 1074 - 1080 Washington Avenue, Bronx, Seeking Public Comment 17 - 18 accessed November 3, 2023 https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/hpd/downloads/pdf/developers/1080-washington-ave-section-106-public-notice.pdf
[9] Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church, New York City Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, accessed February 19, 2024, http://www.nycago.org/Organs/Brx/html/CentenaryMeth.html.
[10] Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church, New York City Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, op. cit.
[11] Public Notice Regarding Section 106 Review of the Proposed Supportive and Affordable Housing Project at 1074 - 1080 Washington Avenue, Bronx, Seeking Public Comment, op.cit.18.
[12] New York City Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church, op. cit.,citing and quoting Report of the New York City Church Extension and Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church for the years ending Dec. 31st, 1878 – 1896.
[13] Joan H. Geismar, An Archeological Assessment of the Morrisania Urban Renewal Project, Bronx, New York, Prepared for TAMS Consultants, Inc. January 1992, 59, accessed February 18, 2024 http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/arch_reports/100.pdf.
[14] Thomas Scharf, op. cit. 566- 7.
[15] Joel Schwartz, op. cit. 94.
[16] Evelyn Gonzalez, op. cit. 40
[17] Joel Schwartz, op. cit.
[18] Lloyd Ultan, op. cit. 137.
[19] Ibid, 197.
[20] The Town of Morrisania was formed in 1855. It included the Village of Morrisania, as well as many other villages in what is now the South Bronx, such as Mott Haven, Melrose, and Highbridge.