Brooklyn History -- Reverend Talmage’s Tabernacle
Interior of the third Talmage Tabernacle, Clinton Avenue. Photo: nycago.org

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 5 of this story.

If your church burns down once, it can inspire a congregation to build again; larger, stronger and better. If the new building, in the same location as the first, burns down fifteen years later, in the midst of a violent thunderstorm, you might take it as a sign that it’s time to find another part of town to build in.

This is exactly what the minister, board and congregation of the Brooklyn Tabernacle thought after their church, called Talmage’s Tabernacle, burned to the ground for the second time, in 1889.

The first two churches had been on the edge of Downtown Brooklyn, on Schermerhorn Street, between Nevins and Third Avenue. After a search for a suitable property, it was announced that the third Talmage’s Tabernacle would rise on Clinton Avenue, at the corner of Greene Avenue, in fashionable Clinton Hill.

Rev. Talmage told the press that there seemed to be “a fatality about the location”, on Schermerhorn, and he and the congregation retired once again to the Brooklyn Academy of Music until the new church could be built.

The third Tabernacle, like the second, was designed by Scottish-born architect John Welsh. It was a large rough-cut brick, sandstone and granite Romanesque Revival style church, with a tall, thick bell tower that rose over that part of Clinton Avenue.

The cornerstone for the church was a large block of granite from Mars Hill, in Athens, where the apostle Paul gave a famous sermon to the Greeks, as chronicled in the New Testament Book of Acts. It was laid on Oct. 28, 1889, and signaled the beginning of a new church, and a whole new bunch of problems for Talmage and his flock.

The church would cost $400,000, a massive sum for the time, and they didn’t have it. By 1890, there was a mechanics lien on the building for work that had not been paid for, and construction had halted. Talmage assured reporters that the church would be done, and dedicated by Easter of 1891.

The church had insurance from the last building, collections, a building fund, fundraisers, they even got donations from other churches, but it just wasn’t enough.

In September of 1890, they filed papers with the courts to take out a mortgage on the property, which would be held by Manhattan financier Russell Sage. Sage would lend them at least $113,000 in order for them to finish the church.

Russell Sage was a notorious skinflint, and probably only lent the church the money because his wife leaned on him. She was a generous philanthropist and supporter of all kinds of causes across the city, and was a very religious woman. Sage was a businessman.

He charged the Tabernacle 6% interest on the loan. The hard working Trustees of the church issued bonds in order to raise even more money. The bonds were backed by a mortgage of another $250,000 on the church and property. The Tabernacle was running on faith, not cash.

Of course, money or no money, Talmage wasn’t going to go cheap on the furnishings of his new 6,000 seat church. He ordered a new organ from Jardin & Sons, one of the finest organ makers in the country. You may remember that Talmage loved organ music, and both of his churches had immense pipe organs that were the second biggest draw to the church, besides Talmage himself.

For the new Tabernacle, Talmage was having a $30,000 instrument built to order, five times as expensive as most church organs, and twice as expensive as the massive church organ Jardin had built for the New York Methodist Episcopal Church on Dean Street in the St. Marks District, which at the time was the largest pipe organ in Brooklyn.

The second Tabernacle organ had three keyboards; this one had four, plus a 2 ½ octave foot pedal keyboard. This magnificent instrument would be the second largest organ in America, surpassed in size only by the organ in the great Chicago Auditorium. The longest pipe in the system was 32 feet long, the same as the longest pipe at Westminster Abbey, in London. All in all, the organ would have 66 stops, and a whopping 4,448 pipes.

Throughout the entire re-building years, Rev. Talmage had refused to take a salary, but was often out and about raising money and responding to his ever-growing popularity.

In 1889, he was asked to the White House, where he met with President Grover Cleveland, who declared that Talmage’s presence was like “a ray of light shot through the muggy atmosphere of political contention.” He travelled to Europe, lecturing across the continent, and even met with the Czar of Russia, and dined with Russian nobility.

His lecture series in England provided the good reverend with a lesson in supply and demand; he was in demand, his fee went up and his venues had to supply it. As he travelled across the UK, he realized that his audiences were larger than expected and more receptive, so mid-tour; he upped his fee from $100 a lecture to $200.

Since he was sold out well in advance, and cancelling would be disastrous, his venues complied. No wonder he wasn’t collecting a salary from the church.

The third Brooklyn Tabernacle was up and running in the spring of 1891, as Dr. Talmage had predicted. There were still some details to finish, but the church, which had so upset local residents who were afraid of all the crowds in their neighborhood, was conducting Sunday services, as well as weekday lectures, concerts and meetings.

The new church was enormous, and seated 6,000 people, and could fit another 2,000 in standing room. It had one of the largest pipe organs in the Western world, and a 200 voice choir. Only the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, which could hold 10,000 people, was bigger.

In spite of the neighbor’s trepidations, the church proved to be an economic draw for the neighborhood, and in 1891, it was announced that a large and luxurious new hotel would be built right next door to the church.

The new hotel, called the Regent, was seven stories tall, and had 96 suites of two to six rooms, as well as bachelor’s apartments on the top floor. It had a restaurant on the ground floor, an indoor atrium garden, and all the finest of amenities in the European and Fifth Avenue manner.

The building itself was a handsome white marble and terra-cotta building in the Renaissance Revival style, and was advertised as a home away from home for businessmen, who could relax in splendor in the white and gold Louis XVI decorated rooms on the ground floor. The hotel opened on July 15, 1893.

The church from which Reverend Talmage railed against the evils of drink and vice was nonetheless a good neighbor to the elegant new hotel, and Clinton Hill saw more buildings rise on this end of the avenue.

John Welsh, the architect of the Tabernacle, designed his finest church, the Episcopal church of St. Luke, on Clinton Avenue, between Fulton and Atlantic Avenues, which started to rise in 1888, a year before the second Tabernacle burned. All was well in the early 1890’s except for one thing – the problems with money, or lack of it, just wouldn’t quit.

During a prayer meeting at the church one Friday night in December of 1892, sheriff’s marshals came in and seized the building. An interior decorator named Alfred R. Tong was suing the church for non-payment of $1104.88, for work done in the Tabernacle, and had won the judgment.

He was going to get his money from the collection plate, if not before. Rev. Talmage and the Board refused to talk to reporters. By March of 1893, the papers were full of stories about the church’s continuing financial woes. Liens and judgments, including one from the stone mason who had shut down the building site way back in 1890, were uncollected.

The church needed another quarter of a million dollars, and the treasurer reported that they were barely paying their running expenses. At the height of this financial crisis, Dr. Talmage announced that he might have to leave, as it was all too much for him to deal with, and other churches were sending him tempting offers.

In an interview with the Eagle, Talmage blamed the church’s financial problems on the fire that had burned the previous church to the ground. He said they never recovered from that. He went on to say that “These money troubles of ours oppress me.

They interfere with my work. I have often said that I have but one real trouble in life and that is the conditions that beset the Tabernacle. The truth is that the person who occupies the pulpit in a church needs to conserve all his mental forces for his special work.”

When pressed as to whether or not he was leaving, Talmage hedged and demurred, but did not directly answer the question, other than to say he enjoyed his sojourn in Brooklyn.

On March 3rd, 1894, Rev. Talmage announced that he would leave if the financial problems of the church were not resolved by Mar. 22. He put in his resignation, saying that “the constant uncertainty as to the continued life of the church embarrassed him in his work, and he thinks that he is not called upon to stand the strain any longer.”

There had been more board shake-ups, and mini-scandals, and even the addition of Frank Talmage, the 23 year old son of the Talmage’s , himself also a newly minted minister, did not help matters any.

In 1893, the organist, Professor Henry Eyre Brown, who had taken over from George Morgan, right before the fire in 1889, was threatening to quit, as he was owed back pay, some of the debt a year old. Only the promise of back pay and a raise kept him in his seat.

Brooklyn rallied about the Tabernacle, with charity events and fundraisers held to benefit the church. No one seemed to want to lose the Rev. Talmage. By 1894, thousands of dollars had been raised, within and beyond the church, holding the wolf of debt at bay. But that soon would not be a problem. Or not the same kind of problem, anyway.

May 13th, 1894 was a Sunday. Reverend Talmage was getting ready to leave Brooklyn on another lecture tour, and he and his wife were greeting the last of the congregation after services. All of a sudden, one of the church members remaining in his pew noticed smoke coming from behind the altar.

In no time, the back of the church went up in flames, and the Talmage’s, the organist, and remaining members barely escape from the church. As a growing crowd gathered, and the fire trucks arrived, the entire building was a blazing inferno.

By the end of the day, the third Brooklyn Tabernacle was an empty burned out shell. The brand new Regent Hotel was also a burned out shell. Lost in the fire were thousands of dollars’ worth of furnishings, the second largest pipe organ in America, and a whole lot of debt. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Okay, we’re almost at the end here. Why did the church go up like a stack of paper? Was it arson, electric wiring, or an act of God? What’s Talmage going to do now? Can his congregation possibly think of trying it one more time? How do you rebuild a church of this size? Who would sell these people another priceless organ? What ever happened to Rev. Talmage and the Talmage Tabernacle? We tie up all the loose ends in the last installment, next time.

Rev. Talmage’s Tabernacle, part 1
Rev. Talmage’s Tabernacle, part 2
Rev. Talmage’s Tabernacle, part 3

Illustration: New York Times
Tabernacle (right) and Regent Hotel (left) during the fire. Photo: Brooklyn Museum Archives
After the fire. Photo: Brooklyn Public Library

 


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