theme throughout all these early vestry meetings was the failure of communicants to pay their quarterly pew rents on time. The operating expenses of the church had to be met in this way whether or not people were in their pews on Sunday. This financial arrangement is not dissimilar to the present-day pledge system with envelopes for weekly offerings, which are expected to be used regardless of attendance, if monetary obligations are to be met. Nor yet is it unlike the method of church dues used generally in Caribbean countries, which must be met monthly.
Doctor Johnson was at Saint John’s Church until July 1847, when he resigned. He had founded the parish and watched it grow in membership, strength, involvement in the larger life of the diocese and church, and grow in usefulness in so many ways to the community. He was a rector without pay for twenty-one years, by his own request, and enjoyed above all the building up of a parish and its diversified administrative duties. He was manifestly a person of substantial means who used funds generously for the building up of Holy Church. After his resignation he remained active in Brooklyn. In September 1847 he formed another congregation in a room on Jackson Street, which became Saint Michael’s Parish.
The second rector was the Reverend Samuel Roosevelt Johnson, son-in-law of the Reverend Evan Malbone Johnson. During his brief tenure it is interesting to note that Saint John’s occupied a position of some importance in the diocese. A special convention of the Episcopal Diocese of New York met in Saint John’s "chapel" to consider certain special amendments to the canons of the diocese. Doctor Samuel Johnson resigned in November of 1850, when he was elected Professor of Systematic Divinity at General Theological Seminary. He, however, continued to supply until 1853. There is a mysterious communication in the parish archives from a Reverend N. A. Okson, addressed to the wardens and vestrymen, accepting the rectorship. There are equally mysterious references to a Reverend D. V. M. Johnson (another Johnson relative?) who apparently took some services during 1852. There are no further records of, or references to, either of them, nor are they to be found in the archives of the diocese.
There is a curious point which might well be mentioned here. According to our parish registers (volumes containing lists of communicants, members, and official certification of every baptism, confirmation, marriage, burial, and bishop’s visitation), which are complete and unaltered from the founding date of September 1826 to the present day. These registers, along with other archives in the parish, indicate that there have been fifteen rectors of Saint John’s Church at Brooklyn including the present rector, Clarence H. Powers. Some Diocesan publications, however, list him as the sixteenth rector and perhaps the confusion has some connection with the priest mentioned above who communicated with the vestry about the office of rector. Suffice it to say that our parish is satisfied, after due search, to accept the number as being but fifteen.
The Reverend Thomas F. Guion was instituted as the third rector in 1853. He served until his death in 1862 and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery. Unfortunately there is little further information about his nine-year ministry, but from subsequent events we know that the parish was flourishing and plans were being made for further growth and expansion. There is a memorial window to Doctor Guion in the present choir transept.
The Reverend George F. Seymour became the fourth rector in 1863. He remained only three years and left in 1866, but planning for expansion continued. He later became the first bishop of Springfield, Illinois. Prior to 1868, Long Island, including Brooklyn and Queens, was part of the Diocese of New York. After it became a separate diocese, the same Bishop Seymour frequently performed Episcopal acts during the illness of the first bishop, the Right Reverend Abram N. Littlejohn.
The Civil War occurred during the tenure of Doctors Guion and Seymour. No doubt some members of Saint John’s served in the Grand Army of the Republic, but the parish archives are silent on this point. The draft, then as now, was unpopular, and there were serious draft riots in Manhattan, but apparently little trouble in Brooklyn. Saint John’s was still busy planning on moving from the original church building and erecting a larger one elsewhere.
Relocating the Parish
The decision to relocate was no doubt unanimous, but the choice of a new site must have been a difficult and studied undertaking. The following historical sketch may help you appreciate the factors influencing the final choice of a locale for the new church. As prudent men are wont to do, the rector, vestrymen and planners searched for a spot in the neighborhood that was accessible (remember, there were no cars or buses!), socially and therefore economically stable (pews had to be paid for), and able to keep pace with the rapid expansion of the City of Brooklyn itself. Many residents of Manhattan and Brooklyn Heights were anxious to move to the quiet, pastoral countryside of suburban Brooklyn to avoid the congestion and traffic of the city. And, since there were no bridges at this time, they were quite willing to use the Brooklyn ferry across the East River to conduct their business. When the parish was first born, Brooklyn consisted of two centers. Brooklyn proper was about where the Dime Savings Bank is today. The Old First Church, now a neighbor of ours on Seventh Avenue, stood on Fulton Street between Lawrence and Bridge Streets. The Brooklyn Ferry was the other settlement at the foot of Fulton Street. "There is an old City Guide Book which states that from J. R. Bedell’s, stages ran to Hempstead every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 3:00 p.m. so that, if the Garden City Cathedral had existed in 1826 and if any of you desired to attend service there, you would have had to have left J. R. Bedell’s at 3:00 p.m. the day before." (Quoted from the 100th Anniversary Sermon.)
Things were somewhat different in the late 1860s, after the Civil War, when the church was eager to establish in a new area. Topographically there is an incline from the Brooklyn piers on the East River to Flatbush Avenue and Eastern Parkway: a natural slope from Prospect Park all the way "down to the sea." Hence the community is called Park Slope. It is no exaggeration to say that the present location of the church was at the time surrounded by farming plots filled with barnyard animals. The settlers tended to move up the slope as they became more prosperous. Brownstone homes became architecturally more elaborate as homemakers moved from Fourth Avenue up to the Park. In a way, it was like a society game of "King of the Mountain." A tour of Park Slope even today reveals this progression. The planners of the parish estimated the future and wisely decided to settle with the growing community. It was during this somewhat fluid period that the fifth rector came to Saint John’s.
He was the Reverend Alexander Burgess, 1867-1868, who later was elevated to the episcopate and consecrated first bishop of Quincy, Illinois. During his one-year tenure in Brooklyn, the original Saint John’s Church was sold. It was demolished in 1869 and the Brooklyn Theatre was built on the site and opened in 1871. When it burnt down with the loss of many lives, some people considered it was the "judgment of God" because a theatre had been erected on a holy site. The theatre was rebuilt but was later torn down and replaced by the now-defunct Brooklyn Daily Eagle building. In 1959, this in turn was razed and replaced by the present Supreme Court building. The site of the original church building is now a park-like area on Johns Street near that building.
Although the planning originated under previous rectors and vestries, it was under the Reverend R. E. Terry, the sixth rector, 1869-1874, that the cornerstone was laid for what are now the present transepts, on 15 June 1869. This cornerstone is to be seen on the far left of the steps going up to the original entrance to the church. It reads simply: "Jesus + Christ." No name or date is chiseled into the stone. It makes one wonder if indeed another cornerstone had been anticipated. The simplicity of this one seems out of character with the Victorian era. A plot of land had been bought on lower De Kaib Avenue, but, as mentioned above, the Park Slope section was building up rapidly, and the parish wisely gave up that location and purchased a large lot on the corner of what was then Douglass Street and Seventh Avenue.
During 1869-70, a small chapel and a spacious and beautiful fourteen-room rectory were built on the side of this property which is now Saint John’s Place. A majority of the old congregation, but not all, were willing to move to the "wilds" of the Park Slope area. The undertaking of an agreement to build both a church and rectory in the space of a year or so would require hiring a large construction company with many craftsmen and skilled laborers. And that is what happened.
The new St. John’s was not to be a wood and timber construction like the original but a larger, more pretentious and solid one, built of rock foundations and walls of hand-hewn, reddish-brown sandstone. According to one authority on the Victorian period, "It was in the 1840s that Gothic Revival, with its Romantic preference for natural dark colors and elaborate ornament, reached New York. Gothic found its ideal building material in the local brown sandstone of Connecticut and New Jersey. Soft brownstone could be cut to produce elaborate facades for brick row houses-and in no time weathered to a rich mahogany, which was considered refined. By the 1860s, brownstone had become the favorite building material of New York City." (New York News Magazine, 27 June 1976) White limestone was used for aesthetic contrast for the capstones, a few decorative small columns and door arches. This building combination is illustrated by the former St. Ann’s Church on Clinton Street in the Heights. A few broad steps and a large, arched entranceway housing heavy oak double doors is a grand facade for any building. For a church it presents an invitingly lofty entrance. From the street it offers a view to the altar that so often distinguishes a Christian church. Alongside and above the main doors are seven windows symmetrically arranged, gradually increasing in length and breadth from the lower ones to the top. This too hints at a spirit of "uplifting" or "reaching for above" which reflects the true spirit of Christ, Our Heavenly King. And so once again stone and mortar and glass, in the hands of dedicated and talented craftsmen, have a story of their own to tell. At the very top is a modest campanile made of four white stone columns capped with an A-shaped stone to follow the contour of the roof and the front of the edifice itself.
