t, and
again, in 1856, to a Baptist Church in Twelfth Street. The present
structure, considered one of the finest examples of Saracenic
architecture in the country, was designed by Leopold Eidlitz, and
completed at a cost of six hundred thousand dollars. The materials are
brown and yellow sandstone, with black and red tiles alternating on the
roof. Within, near the entrance, are memorial tablets to Dr. Leo
Merzbacher, first Rabbi, 1845-56, and to his successors, Dr. Samuel
Adler (father of Felix Adler), 1857-74, and Dr. Gustav Gottheil,
1873-1903. The present Rabbi is the Rev. Joseph Silverman.

Back from the Avenue, on the west side, between Forty-third and
Forty-fourth Streets, there once stood the Coloured Orphan Asylum. It
was a square four-story building, occupying almost the entire block, and
there was a garden in front extending to the road. The Asylum, which was
under the management of the Association for the Benefit of Coloured
Orphans, organized in 1836 by a number of prominent New York women,
received from the city in 1842 a grant of twenty-two lots and erected
the building in which the children were housed and taught trades. In the
summer of 1863 there were between two hundred and two hundred and fifty
children in the institution. Then Congress passed the Conscription Law.
In the evening papers of Saturday, July 11th, the names of those drafted
from New York were announced. Excitement seethed that night and all day
Sunday. Monday the storm broke. The draft offices were surrounded by a
mob, and as the first name was called a stone crashed through a window.
That was the signal. The offices were rushed and the building soon in
flames. The police were routed, and a squad of soldiers sent to their
aid disarmed and badly beaten. Then the mob ranged, pillaging the house
of William Turner on Lexington Avenue, firing the Bull's Head Hotel at
Forty-fourth Street, and the Croton Cottage opposite the Reservoir,
plundering the Provost Marshal's office at 1148 Broadway, and destroying
an arms factory at Seventh Avenue and Twenty-first Street. Then some one
in the mob cried out that the war was being fought on account of the
negroes and the rioters started in the direction of the Asylum. When
they reached the spot they found an empty building, for the alarm had
been given and the children taken to the Police Station and later
conducted under guard to the Almshouse on Blackwell's Island. But the
structure they destroyed, an