Eleventh Street Methodist Episcopal Chapel (later People’s Home Church and Settlement, now The Father’s Heart Church)

History and architecture

The Eleventh Street Methodist Episcopal Chapel (later People’s Home Church and Settlement, now The Father’s Heart Church) was constructed in 1867-68 to the design of prominent architects William Field and Son. The firm is best known as the architects of affordable apartment houses and this is one of the few known houses of worship that they designed. By the mid-19th century the Gothic Revival style had become the standard for church buildings in the United States. Gothic Revival style features of the church include the window hood moldings with stops and the pointed finials at the roof; however, the squares with stylized flower designs and the pointed arched corbel table of the cornice are decorative, eclectic features that are highly unusual.

Architects Jallade and Barber altered the front facade of the church in 1900-01 by moving the entrance from the center bay to the western bay; the new entrance was designed with a then-fashionable Colonial Revival style door surround featuring brick quoins and a stone lintel with splayed keystones and stops. After the alterations, the mission reopened in 1901 with a new name, the People’s Home Church and Settlement, and its institutional work was enlarged.

The Lower East Side was one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the city and had a predominately lower-income immigrant population. Mission churches such as the Eleventh Street Methodist Episcopal Chapel provided social services in addition to religious evangelical work. In addition to religious services, prayer meetings and a Sunday school, the settlement had a dispensary, kindergarten, day nursery, fresh air program, gymnasium, baths, industrial classes, music instruction, reading room, penny provident society, and numerous clubs.

The church also had an extensive mission to Italian immigrants and there were services, meetings and bible classes conducted in Italian. The Methodist Episcopal Church closed the church in 1930 and sold the building to the Russian Ukrainian Polish Pentecostal Church, the first Slavic Pentecostal church in the country, in 1941. Its successor, The Father’s Heart Church, still occupies the premises. The work of the church today, like its 19th century predecessors on the Lower East Side, includes religious and social services.