Joseph Levi Samuel Christian Frederick Frey came from London and preached in June 1817 at a fellowship that was meeting in a school on Mulberry Street. After fast growth, the fellowship soon became a church. He was ordained as a Presbyterian minister on April 15, 1818. The Hebrew congregation grew quickly and[ purchased a building on Pearl Street from the Universalists.
Pearl Street is one of the liveliest God’s Rows in New York City history. More religion took place on this street than can be imagined. The street was named by the Dutch for the crushed oyster shells that were used to pave it. The pearly street led to many of the Pearly Gates in Heaven. The very first church, the First Dutch Reformed Church of New Amsterdam, was established on Pearl Street in 1633. By the early 19th Century, this street figured in the history of the abolition of slavery, the first African American church, and the rise of 19th Century evangelical Christianity in New York City. One home was even the home of the former skipper of the ship Angel Gabriel.
A soap maker, William Colgate, kicked off an onrush of religious fervor on Pearl Street in the early 1800s. He belonged to a group of merchants who ventured from Pearl Street to prick the city’s conscience over slavery, alcohol addiction, and poverty. They championed free labor, drug freedom, and democratic practice that impelled the poor upward. While others were planting mansions all the way uptown to the racetracks–far distant from the unwashed immigrants, the brothers and sisters on this street were shoveling the money into compassion ministries, Bibles, and immigrant welcoming committees. Colgate emphasized that Christians should be among the poor and immigrant classes. Also on Pearl Street was the business premises of one of the premier abolitionists Lewis Tappan.
On this street, you could also go down the narrow alleyway to enter the New Jerusalem Church. The English Lutheran Church in the City of New York (later called Zion Church) got its start on April 4. 1669 and on Pearl, It built a frame church opposite of city hall. The evangelically-minded (at that time) Universalist Church took over the building and became known as the Pearl Street Church and sold its building to Frey’s group in 1818. As an immigrant Jew, Frey was part of this rising tide of well-doing. The street was a font of blessing and his congregation grew much so that they had to purchase a larger building on Vandewater Street.
Read a lively mystery on the history of 211 Pearl Street.
