New York Avenue Presbyterian Church - Beginnings

Beginnings

The F Street Church was established in 1803 with James Laurie as pastor by leaders of the Associate Reformed movement, known as covenanters, who had seceded from the Church of Scotland in the mother country and retained a separate identity in North America. After holding initial worship services in the U.S. Treasury building, in 1807 the congregation began meeting, still under the leadership of Dr. Laurie, in an imposing brick building that stood where the F Street entrance to the Willard Hotel today opens on to Peacock Alley—just two blocks from the church's present location on New York Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets, NW. The F Street Church, or Willard Hall, was one of the first buildings erected in Washington for Protestant worship. In 1824 Laurie led the congregation out of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian group to join the Presbyterian Church in the USA, which represented the mainstream of American Presbyterianism descended from the state-established Church of Scotland.

The Second Presbyterian Church, also a congregation of the PCUSA, was organized in 1820 by 16 families from the Bridge Street Presbyterian Church in Georgetown, at the time a separate town from Washington City. These members found their church too distant for regular attendance over the often muddy streets connecting the White House area and Georgetown. Pastored until 1828 by the Rev. Daniel Baker, the Second Church congregation included three of the four candidates for President in 1824. Andrew Jackson’s wife described Baker as “a fine, plain preacher,” and John Quincy Adams was an early pew holder as Secretary of State and ultimately served as Trustee.

In those days, controversy divided Presbyterians into opposing camps of “Old Schoolers” and “New Schoolers.” The New School was ardently evangelistic and revivalist, and abandoned strict Calvinism for a theology of free will; the Old School was more doctrinally rigid and fearful of too much emotion. Second Church experienced an Old School/New School division, suffered financial hardship in covering the cost of its new building, and became involved in a scandal involving a member of Jackson's cabinet. By the 1850s, it was barely functioning.

Finally, in 1859, the F Street Church, pastored by Rev. Dr. Phineas Densmore Gurley, an Old School Presbyterian who had been called in 1853 following Dr. Laurie's death, merged with Second Presbyterian to form The New York Avenue Presbyterian Church under Dr. Gurley.

Symbolically, as a church in the young and burgeoning city, the NYAPC took its name from the avenue that separated it from the oftentimes malodorous tanyard on its south side. Not surprisingly, the new church was erected with a bold vision for the future, for although its membership stood at 291, the new sanctuary and a gallery added later accommodated more than three times that number.