The First Coloured Presbyterian Church stood at 119 Elm Street at what is today the corner of Canal and Lafayette Streets. Built only two years before, the property cost $8,300 and was purchased with money loaned to Congregation B’nai Jeshurun by several of BJ’s Trustees. It was a fortunate purchase for the new congregation, as the space could be readily adapted — but it was the result of unfortunate circumstances for the church.

In 1825, the New York City Jewish population was less than 1,000 people comprising only 0.0067% of the city’s approximately 150,000 residents. The African American population was estimated to be much larger, at around 10% of the city’s population, and consisted largely of recently freed enslaved people, free-born people, and escapees from the South. (Slave ownership was being gradually phased out in New York State, but slavery wasn’t formally abolished in the state until 1827.)

While both Jewish and Black communities faced social discrimination, the legal challenges of the two populations were very different. The New York State constitution gave full political rights to Jewish men. Unfortunately, these rights were not extended to free Black men. In 1821, the state legislature eliminated a property requirement for voting for White men. Simultaneously, it ruled that free Black men could vote only if they owned property worth at least $250. This requirement made most Black men ineligible to vote. As a result, there were only sixteen qualified Black voters in New York in 1825.

Most employed African Americans in the nineteenth century did so-called “unskilled” work. Men were often laborers and women domestic servants. In nineteenth-century New York City, many commercial and educational facilities refused to serve African Americans and the public transportation systems were racially segregated. In 1825, more than one-fifth of the African American residents of Manhattan lived in the slums of the sixth ward, which spread from the Five Points neighborhood (present-day Chinatown) north and west to the Hudson River, not far from the First Colored Presbyterian Church on Elm Street.

The young minister of the new church was a light-skinned Black man named Samuel Cornish, who had been recruited by White New York evangelicals to missionize the poor Black community. On January 13, 1822, Cornish organized the First Coloured Presbyterian Church. Two years later, Cornish secured loans from a tobacco merchant named John Lorillard and the presbytery to fund the $14,000 construction of a brick church building. Unfortunately, Cornish’s political and theological views antagonized the lenders and due to outstanding debt, the building was sold under foreclosure of mortgage in 1826. Years later, the congregation reconstituted itself as the Shiloh Presbyterian Church in Greenwich Village.

When Congregation B’nai Jeshurun acquired the Elm Street church, they immediately renovated the inside to allow for the traditional ritual practice and reading of the Torah. They most likely followed the layout of Shearith Israel, with a space for the ark at one end and a bimah and reading table for the Torah in the center. On the outside they built a portico with four brick columns, lending a neo-classical touch to the building. While the synagogue was large for its time, seating 600, within two decades the congregation outgrew the space as more Jewish immigrants arrived in New York City.

Sources

• Israel Goldstein, A Century of Judaism in New York: B’nai Jeshurun 1825-1925
• Jonathan Greenleaf, A History of the Churches, of all Denominations, in the City of New York, from the First Settlement to the Year 1850
• City University of New York
• Burrows & Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898