White House

White House Churches

James Young's historical masterwork, The Washington Community, 1800-1828, makes the strong case that, because of the early 19th century obstacles to transportation between Capitol Hill and the White House, residential development in the City formed separately around the two branches of government, thereby reinforcing the political design of separation of powers.  In other words, social interaction both followed and reinforced institutional structures.  Certainly the evidence of the beginnings of the New York Avenue Church support Young's thesis.  Both churches that merged in 1859 to form the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, the F Street Church (founded in 1803) and the Second Presbyterian Church (founded in 1819) emerged blocks from the White House -- and several miles from the Capitol, and the people who joined those congregations contained far more people whose jobs were bound up with the Executive than with the Legislative Branch.  On the other hand, just on the face of it, the two congregations appear to have served two fairly distinct classes of the community that sprung up around the White House and the departments of government.  One, the F Street Congregation, was founded by artisans, the Scottish stonemasons who helped build the White House.  Another illustration: Pew rents at Second Church in the early 1820s ranged from $50 to $150 per annum.  The comparable rents for pews in the F Street Church were $5 to $30.

In contrast, just of the basis of its congregants, the Second Church constituted a far more politically powerful and socially prestigious community.  It was Second Church that drew Presidents and cabinet members, where, for example, John Quincy Adams was a Trustee when he was Secretary of State, and where the President, Andrew Jackson, the Vice-President, John C. Calhoun, and the Secretary of War, John Eaton, were members during the Jackson Administration.

It is ironic, then, that Second Church was the one that made occasional overtures to the F Street Congregation to merge, based in part on their proximity to one another but also on the former's ongoing internal dissension and budgetary problems.  It seems that the more stolid F Street Congregation could maintain a level of congregational support that the more socially prominent but more mobile and contentious Second Church Congregation could not.  Or perhaps part of F Street's relative solvency was based on the willingness of Rev. Laurie to travel up and down the East Coast in search of financial support for his congregation.