Brooklyn History -- Reverend Talmage’s Tabernacle
Illustration via Wikipedia

Read Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 of this story.

Brooklyn was not named the “City of Churches” only because of the many fine church buildings that graced her streets. She was also famous for some of the great men who took to their pulpits in these fine churches and thundered down the Word of the Lord to their congregations.

The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher was probably the most famous of these 19th century preachers, and his sermons and anti-slavery fervor made him world famous. But he was not alone. The second half of the 19th century saw the rise of several other famous preachers, with the Reverend Dr. Thomas DeWitt Talmage probably second only to Henry Beecher himself, in terms of popularity, and the size of his congregation.

Rev. Talmage, like Beecher, was a charismatic man, a speaker of great oratorical skill, and could fill a room like few others. And, like his fellow clergyman in the Heights, the Reverend Talmage’s triumphs, tragedies and tribulations were larger than life, as well.

Thomas DeWitt Talmage was born in 1832, in Franklin Township, New Jersey. As befitting a future leader of Brooklyn, he was the descendent of some of New York’s earliest Dutch settlers. His mother was Catharine Van Neste, his father David Talmage, whose own ancestors came from England, and numbered among the first founders of East and South Hampton, NY.

He grew up in comfortable surroundings, and got his degree at the University of the City of New York, now NYU, and studied law before deciding on the ministry. In that, he followed a family tradition; he and three brothers became ministers, all Doctors of Divinity, the fifth Talmage brother became a successful merchant.

In 1862, Talmage became pastor of the Second Reformed Dutch Church in Philadelphia. It was here that he began to establish his reputation as a dynamic speaker and gifted preacher. He took some time to serve as a Union chaplain during the Civil War, but stayed pretty close to home to grow his church.

His sermons were often sensational, and his delivery theatrical, causing him to be called a “pulpit clown” and “mountebank” by his detractors, but his congregation didn’t care, they packed into the church, so much so that people had to be turned away into the street. His reputation spread outside of Philadelphia, and in 1869, he accepted the job as pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn.

Central Presbyterian Church was located on Willoughby and Pearl Streets in 1847. The church was growing out of its building, and in 1853, they built a frame tabernacle on the corner of State and Nevins Street for services.

This building could seat quite a few people, but when Talmage arrived, it proved to be way too small, with hundreds being turned away. In 1870, a new church building went up at Schermerhorn near Third Avenue and, built in only three months, with funds quickly raised through Talmage’s popularity.

This was called the Brooklyn Tabernacle, forever referred to as “Talmage’s Tabernacle”. The crowds grew even greater, and three services had to be held on Sundays to accommodate them all. And still they came.

What was Talmage doing to bring them in? He was giving his congregation the must-have’s of successful preaching: sound theology, well delivered, with theatrical pizzazz. No one fell asleep at Talmage’s Tabernacle.

Perhaps only Henry Ward Beecher was better, but Beecher had the evils of slavery to enrage and inspire him, and by the 1870’s was winding down, about to be involved in a very ugly adulterous scandal. The church going public was looking for the new “Beecher”, and found it in T. DeWitt Talmage.

In eulogizing Talmage after his death, a reporter from the NY Times recalled Talmage’s preaching style: “One Sunday morning when the time came for him to deliver his sermon, he walked to the extreme edge on one side of his fifty-foot platform, faced about, then suddenly started as fast as he could jump for the opposite side.

Just as everybody in the congregation, breathless, expected to see him pitch headlong from the further side of the platform he leaped suddenly in the air and came down with a crash, shouting, “Young man, you are rushing towards a precipice”. And then he delivered a moving sermon upon the temptations and sins of youth in a big city.”

The Tabernacle itself was a different kind of church building. Like Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Church, this was a preacher’s church, more auditorium than altar-bound sanctuary. The Brooklyn Eagle reported that the building resembled a concert hall, inside and out, with only a small steeple to denote a church.

It was built for acoustic excellence and sightlines, not stained glass and flying buttresses. There was a different kind of sacred theater here.

The eagerness to have the building finished in record time, in order to house Talmage’s growing audiences probably contributed to some pretty shoddy building, and two years after the Talmage Tabernacle was finished, it burned to the ground in a spectacular fire just before Christmas in 1872, one of Brooklyn’s worst fires to date. This fire took place as many made their way to services on Sunday morning, and fortunately, no one was trapped or injured.

Later, it turned out that the building was a cast iron shell façade built over a wooden frame, resting on an older wood-clad foundation. All of the interior furnishings, including the large number of pews, were wood, and the building was a tinderbox looking for a spark.

An irate engineer and builder, writing into the letters to the editor at the Eagle in 1871, a year and a half before the fire, noted that this building, as well as several others built by the same builder, was an “architectural death trap.”

He bemoaned the lack of manpower and expertise of the Buildings Commissioner, one Mr. Massey, saying that “he knows nothing of building himself, and should an accident happen the whole department would make the sorriest figure of any public officers that ever came upon the stand.”

The man went on to say, “We have a class of men who have studied architectural drawing in an architect’s office, but have no practical experience setting themselves up as architects. They are good picture makers, copying from books, but are ignorant…” Turned out the man was right.

Talmage and his congregation were devastated, but wasted no time in announcing that a new church building would be built on the ashes of the old. In the meantime, they moved their services over to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a large concert hall on Montague Street, and they stayed there until 1874, when the new church was finished.

Talmage and the Trustee board looked at designs by L.B. Valk, a prominent church architect, John Welsh, another good church architect, and Tappin Reeve, choosing the designs of John Welsh for their church. Welsh is best known for the design of St. Luke’s (and St. Matthew’s) Episcopal Church on Clinton Avenue in Clinton Hill, as well as All Saints Episcopal Church on Seventh Avenue and 7th Street in Park Slope.

Welsh’s church for Talmage was quite unique for its time, and the architect is credited in the Times for being the “originator of the amphitheater church”. I don’t think that’s quite accurate, as Joseph Wells and Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Church is also an amphitheater, and was built twenty-two years before.

But he certainly knew his stuff, and designed a huge brick church, which reassured the congregation worried about another fire, that was capable of seating five thousand people. The pews were arranged in a semi-circle, pointing towards the stage and pulpit, with several galleries and balconies to accommodate all of the people.

At the center was the stage and pulpit, backed by the largest organ built for a church in Brooklyn, at that time. This wonderful new building opened for business in 1874, with the Reverend T. DeWitt Talmage at the pulpit, backed by his popular organist, George W. Morgan, “exercising his musical muscle”, as the Brooklyn Eagle enthused. Talmage’s Tabernacle was back.

The years between 1874 and 1889 started off well enough, with church membership growing every week. The church opened the Tabernacle Lay College for the Training of Men and Women for Practical Christian Work.

The idea had begun in 1872 before the fire, but took off after moving into the new building. They bought the building next door to the church, and began admitting students. Before long, they needed another building, and bought “Dr. Spear’s Church” on the corner of Clinton and Amity in 1878.

Reverend Talmage was now one of the most famous preachers in the United States. His lectures and sermons were published in book form and as single articles, and were distributed across the country, and in Europe.

His congregation was growing every day, and he was being called on to give advice to the famous, and speak to congregations great and small in the city, and across the country. But as we all know, when all is going well, a wise man looks for trouble. In 1878, trouble came to call, and it announced itself throughout the Tabernacle in a loud crash of discordant organ music.

Running a huge mega-church was even harder back then than it is now. The Tabernacle had a large board of Trustees which took care of the everyday business dealings of the church, to relieve the Great Man to do Great Things.

In 1878, the Trustees decided for some reason, to fire their long time, and immensely popular organist, George W. Morgan. Before you could say “Bach Toccata and Fugue in D Minor”, the battle was on. And what happened after that would shock Brooklyn.

I’ve been meaning to write about the good Reverend for a while, as his name comes up all the time in my research. But I recently received an email from a reader who was curious about the man, and suggested him for a Walkabout, so now’s the time. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed researching the Rev. Dr. Talmage, and there is much more to come, as our story is far from over. We’ve got lawsuits, trials, resignations, financial problems, bad behavior and other shenanigans, and sadly, more fires. Who said church was boring? Thank you, Mr. Mills, for your most excellent suggestion. Stay tuned.

Reverend Doctor T. DeWitt Talmage in 1870. Photo: Wikipedia
Sketch of the second Talmage Tabernacle, finished in 1874. Brooklyn Public Library.
Sketch by L.B. Valk for his proposed Talmage Tabernacle. This design was not chosen for the final building. NY Public Library.

What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. I have never fully understood why respectable, law-abiding Americans have always loved bombastic preachers who berate them, yell at them, and accuse them of being sinners and unworthies. I would find that experience unpleasant.
    Today, loudmouths are still exploiting Americans’ desire to hear how wicked and evil they are and how the calamities that beset the physical world are sent by an angry God as punishment etc etc. People eat that stuff up.

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