New York City is known for its parades. The city seems ready to burst out in joy by marching around in festive clothes.
One of the best-known parades, whose extravagant fashion is celebrated in song and film, is the Easter Parade! After two years of the pandemic, this is the perfect time to recall that it got its start, at least partly, from the leaders of a hospital which is today on the frontline fighting the Covid virus.
The Easter parade isn’t actually a parade at all. It is more akin to a costume party, emphasizing the flamboyant side of the city. I’ve always suspected that it was started by families who wanted an after-Easter Service event where they could mingle in a leisurely walk home from one of the many large churches on Fifth Avenue. The day was often the first warm day of spring. Decked out in their new Spring season clothes, they could say hello to friends and neighbors, compare notes on services, and talk about their clothes. You see, the day was really a day for the ladies to take front stage. The men were there as supporting actors. The ladies – as the song goes – showed off their new Easter bonnets.
Today, it has grown into a spectacle with folks showing off their funniest, most creative cosplay outfits as well as some very elaborate bonnets. The parade has joined the Macy’s, Columbus, and St. Patrick’s Day parades in an exaggerated style of ethnic, national, or religious identities. In recent years, we have added an Israeli Day parade and a Muslim Day parade – and many others!
Recently, I ran across an article in the archives that seems to indicate that the parade’s origin involved the leaders of St. Luke’s Hospital, which was recently renamed Mount Sinai Morningside. The hospital today is on the frontline in the fight against the COVID virus. This set me off on a search to answer the question, who really did start the famous Easter Parade?
The News of St. Luke’s ran a story in April 1965 that claimed the Easter Parade may have begun in the early 1860s and was started, at least in part, by St. Luke’s Hospital leaders. At that time, St. Luke’s Hospital was a new addition to Fifth Avenue, having opened just a few years earlier, in 1858, on the corner of West 54th Street and Fifth Avenue.
The article for an in-house staff newsletter for the hospital (which was published between the 1940s and 1970s) reports that the Rev. William Muhlenberg, the founder of the St. Luke’s Hospital attended St. Thomas Church on Easter Sunday morning, just a few blocks from the Hospital site. An observer reported that the Reverend was so taken with the ‘galaxy of flowers banked in the church’ that he suggested that the flowers be donated to the Hospital after services were done in order to be distributed among the patients.
A group of young folk was gathered to help transport the pots of flowers, repeating the trip several times to transport all of them. The same witness reported that “the procession attracted attention and was repeated from year to year with ever great pageantry until it became a popular custom, after services, to watch the parade of flowers, and the watchers dressed up for the occasion.” Muhlenberg was quite the public mover and shaker, also founding the Church of the Holy Communion (which was converted much later into the 1990s’ nightclub, The Limelight).
Although this seems to be a plausible explanation for the origins of the Easter Parade, a little bit of detective thinking undermined the solution. True, Rev. Muhlenberg was the Pastor and Superintendent of St. Luke’s Hospital. He considered the chapel and its services the heart of the Hospital’s services. After all, the motto of the Hospital was, and remains, Corpus Sanare, Animam Salvare – “To heal the body, to save the soul.”
Indeed, the chapel was physically at the center of the Hospital, and its wards were designed to connect to it, so patients unable to move to the chapel could still hear services and prayers from their beds. Yet, it is unlikely that he would be attending services elsewhere when he most likely conducted them at his own chapel at roughly the same hour of the day.
So, while Muhlenberg was certainly of the spirit to encourage the flower-giving, maybe it actually started at the instigation of someone else.
In another defunct in-house staff publication that circulated at St. Luke’s Hospital between 1939 and 1952, the St. Luke’s Hospital Bulletin, I finally found what must have been the origin story for the first article.
The Bulletin piece discusses an article that appeared in the New York Herald Tribune in 1946, written by Robert J. Donovan. The New York newspaperman noted that the “fashionable strollers were satirized by Harper’s Weekly a cartoon as early as 1873.” However, he noted that the newspapers ignored the occurrence of the parade as a news story until 1883, after which time they began publishing notices of the fashions that were displayed during the afternoon strolls.
Just prior to the publication of his article, Donovan mentioned that he found a first-hand report by a ‘John S. Van Gilder, of the Hampshire House, 150 Central Park South,’ that supports the St. Luke’s claim to the origins of the parade. This part of the newspaper was reproduced by the hospital bulletin.
“Quoting Major Edward Gilbert Schermerhorn, now eighty-one years old, long a resident of New York and now passing the winter in Alabama, Mr. Van Gilder wrote that it all began with the carrying of Easter flowers from St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue and Fifty-Third Street, to old St. Luke’s Hospital, which stood on the avenue one block to the north.
Major Schermerhorn, later military secretary to the Governor of New York and active in military and patriotic organizations here, was attending services in St. Thomas. As he recalled, it, the galaxy of flowers banked in the church prompted the head of St. Luke’s to suggest that they be taken to the hospital patients after the service. The Suggestion was accepted, and young Schermerhorn and other boys carried the flowers up Fifth Avenue. The procession attracted attention and was repeated from year to year with ever greater pageantry until, Mr. Van Gilder wrote, ‘it became a popular custom on subsequent Easter mornings, after services, to watch the parade of flowers, and the watchers dressed up for the occasion’.”
Schermerhorn was born around 1865, the reporter wrote. So, if he, as a youngster of maybe seven or eight years of age took part in the first flower delivery, that might make that its date 1872, just in time for cartoon satirizing by Harper’s Weekly the next year, and lending credibility to the report.
Furthermore, Schermerhorn’s story states that the head of St. Luke’s suggested that the flowers be taken to the Hospital. So, it might have been either Mr. Murray Hoffman or Mr. William H. Aspinwall who made the request for the flowers, rather than Rev. Muhlenberg. Both men were on the Hospital’s Board of Managers between 1865 and 1869, and both held the office of President for a time during this vaguely dated story. Either man could have been present at the service at St. Thomas’ Church, again, lending some credibility to the Schermerhorn’s report.
In any case, I’m kind of proud to know that St. Luke’s Hospital has not only contributed to the health and well-being of thousands of New Yorkers over the years, and also influenced a unique New York cultural event.
Michala Biondi is Associate Archivist, Mount Sinai St. Luke’s and Mount Sinai West Collections.
Photo persmissions:
Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. “Judy Garland and Fred Astaire in the motion picture Easter Parade.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1948. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/9ec743d1-ed82-87b8-e040-e00a1806734c
Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. “Manhattan: 5th Avenue – 49th Street” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1905. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dc-e62a-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
