A Community, An Organization and A Cause

What the Church of St. Thomas More means to Carnegie Hill

Like meeting a person for the first time, it didn’t occur to me to look past the façade of the Church of St. Thomas More. Located on 89th St. between Madison and Park, I wasn’t moved by the sight of it when I first visited on a windy November afternoon.

Inaptly located between an HSBC, an electric vehicle charging station and a co-op, the church complex houses a neo-gothic sandstone chapel with cream-colored window detailing, an off-white brick tower and a sandy rectory in between. It appeared quaint and cozy but I couldn’t provide any insight into why the neighborhood was fighting adamantly to preserve it from demolition.

The holy structure, the oldest standing institution in Carnegie Hill and the second oldest church on the Upper East Side, faced demolition in 2014 after Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York announced a list of churches in the Archdiocese of New York to be shut down. The community rallied, a petition was created and Peggy Noonan, a Wall Street Journal columnist and Carnegie Hill resident published a personal article about the issue describing the church as a “citizen” of the community.

After obtaining 2,479 signatures when only 1,000 were needed, Cardinal Dolan agreed to a moratorium of two years regarding the church’s demolition plans. In that time, Lo Van Der Valk, president of Carnegie Hill Neighbors (CHN), an organization that upkeeps the neighborhood and protects its enduring character, lead the effort to landmark the Church of St. Thomas More, which would end any concerns about this “citizen” being taken from the community.

Preservation is a top priority in Carnegie Hill, a neighborhood nestled at the center of the Upper East Side of Manhattan from 86th St. to 98th St. between 5th and 3rd Avenues. The fight to preserve is not unique to Carnegie Hill, though. New York has a history of conserving its history.

The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) was created in 1965 with the goal to manage the Landmarks Preservation Law that would protect and standardize historical, architectural and cultural structures all over the city. Multiple factors played a role in the passing of this law, primarily the demolition of Pennsylvania Station in 1964.

Leading up to this, however, was the modern architecture in vogue during the ’50s and ’60s which was slowly reconstructing neighborhoods with white facades and glass walls like the Seagram Building in Midtown, Van Der Valk recalls.

Simultaneously, Robert Moses, a New York city planner whose urban planning rippled throughout the state and even the country was incorrectly associated with the destruction of Penn Station. After his plan to create a Lower Manhattan Expressway was announced, he was strongly opposed by Jane Jacobs, an urban activist and author of “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” Described as one of the “original New York heroes,” by Van Der Valk, she incited people to preserve their communities, hers was Greenwich Village, and the street life and character that had been nurtured and created over time, stopping Moses’s plans.

Initially, the LPC sought to protect the 1000 great buildings in NYC but once Pennsylvania Station was demolished, it expedited the movement and led to the Landmarks Preservation Law. Now, people wanted to focus on entire neighborhoods.

In Carnegie Hill, at this time, there were two existing groups fighting for similar causes. The first opposed the construction of an out-of-place building on 45 East 89th St. and the second was fighting to preserve the brownstones that characterize Carnegie Hill. In 1970, the two groups “joined hands” at the Church of Heavenly Rest and formed Carnegie Hill Neighbors.

CHN immediately set about creating Carnegie Hill’s first historic district to protect their cherished buildings. In 1974, they succeeded. But, the district only included residential buildings, not institutional ones. Again, in 1993, the historic district was expanded but the church was not included because the LPC wanted clearly bordered historic districts and the church was physically located outside that designated zone.

The unfortunate reasons the church still lies outside the historic district are why it is in trouble today. As you may recall, the church was set to close in 2014. Not surprisingly, the community formed a group to oppose this, creating a “Save St. Thomas More Church” petition. The reason for the list of closures the Archdiocese of New York released was to put an end to financially draining churches, ones that had no active congregation or a combination of both.

But the Church of St. Thomas More had neither of these issues. Generations of Carnegie Hill families have held key moments in their life at that church as well as attended mass regularly there. Comments from petitioners on Facebook describe their emotional ties to the church. One man recalls his wedding, the baptism of his three children and his wife’s funeral there. Another describes it as “unconscionable,” while another says it’s “heartbreaking” were the church to be demolished.

CHN, like the rest of the community, has a history with the church as they hold their board and annual meetings there. Since Cardinal Dolan announced the two-year suspension, CHN has been working to achieve landmark status for the church, which would protect it forever.

So, it’s long-standing and people in the community have a history with it. But the reasons CHN and the Carnegie Hill community in general are trying to landmark the church go beyond these reasons.

Completed in 1870, only five years after the end of the civil war, the church’s benefactor was Caroline Talman, the only daughter of a wealthy Wall St. financier and real estate magnate. After learning that St. Luke’s Home for Aged Ladies would be moved from Greenwich Village to the Upper East Side, Talman provided the funds to build what is now known as the Church of St. Thomas More to provide the “aged ladies” with a place of worship. Her patronage is “an early example of female philanthropy,” Van Der Valk said, citing one of the arguments put forth for the landmarking of the church.

Another argument for the preservation of the church lies in those who attended it. Peter Lawford and Patricia Kennedy were married at the Church of St. Thomas More. Once Jacqueline Kennedy returned to New York after her husband’s assassination, she too attended the church. When John Kennedy Jr died, his funeral was held there. The Kennedy family, in general, is iconic and their association with the church lends it further historic value.

Andy Warhol also attended the church as he had his home in one of the Hardenbergh/Rhinelander brownstones on 89th St. and Lexington Avenue. His work continues to be valued today and the LPC, which is charged with protecting cultural heritage, recognizes the significance of these associations with the church.

But landmark status approval, granted by the LPC, is not easy to obtain. The process requires two hearings. In 2015, the community board heard CHN’s appeal and approved it, checking off step one of the process for achieving landmark status for the church.

The second hearing before the LPC, which will determine the fate of the church, will occur at an as-of-yet undecided date set by the LPC.

But, CHN appears confident they’ll succeed. Van Der Valk acknowledges that developers entering their neighborhood know they won’t have it easy if they don’t seek to construct a structure that fits within the context, atmosphere and character of the neighborhood. “It’s like being under siege… both sides are geared up for battle.”

It’s not different in the case of tearing down a structure that holds so much value to the neighborhood. In the words of CHN’s Quality of Life Manager, Josephine Mazur, the Carnegie Hill population has “the money and talent and vision to create the kind of place that they want.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that the church, transformed into a “citizen,” had written its own memoir over the years, giving it the soul that’s fueling the fight for its remainder. Visiting it once again, I felt as if I was meeting an old friend. Now, it wasn’t only the brown bricks I saw, but the history of experiences and stories that shape this small but meaningful structure.