the House of Industry of thirty years ago and who now look at Mulberry
Bend Park may well thank the old Market Street church that the Cow Bay,
Bandit's Roost, the Old Brewery and Cut Throat Alley are things of the
past, and that the Five Points are known to this later day only as a
name. No second Charles Dickens will cross the ocean to tell us that
"all that is loathsome, drooping and decayed is here."

[Illustration]

Few men have been in touch with so many public movements as Dr. Cuyler.
He was the personal friend of statesmen, churchmen, professors,
lecturers, teachers, philanthropists, diplomats, poets and presidents.
And as was the minister so were the people of the Market Street church:
forward in every movement for the betterment of mankind, the coming of
the kingdom. Some of the best families of New York were connected there,
and as fathers bought pews for the sons when they married it was a
family church. These names are frequent: Duryee, Crosby, Mersereau,
Brinkerhoff, Poillon, Zophar Mills, Ludlam, Suydam, Westervelt, Waydell,
Chittenden, Bartlett, McKee, Purdy and a host of others.

Small wonder that from among men like these great institutions should
come, that the Park Bank and the Nassau Bank should be founded by Market
Street church men. The annual pew rents were $5,000, then a large sum.

Perhaps it was their very farsightedness that made the people of the
church think of moving uptown. The "brownstone front" was drawing people
northward, and Dr. Cuyler started a movement "to erect a new edifice
on Murray Hill, and to retain the old building in Market Street as an
auxiliary mission chapel." Subscriptions were secured, William E. Dodge
heading the list. But the new site at Park Avenue and Thirty-fifth
Street did not find favor, and many were opposed to the whole project,
so when in 1860 the consistory was to vote the first payment, the whole
enterprise failed by one vote.

Dr. Cuyler said he would thank the good old man who cast that
vote--Meade was his name--if he ever met him in the other world. He
resigned from Market Street church, his ministry ending April 7, 1860,
and accepted a call from the little Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church
in Brooklyn. His friend, Henry Ward Beecher, did not see how he could
get a congregation there, but after many years of ever-increasing
usefulness Mr. Beecher lived to say to Dr. Cuyler: "You are now in the
center, and I am out on the circumference."

It was