New York Society for Ethical Culture

History and architecture

The meeting house of the New York Society for Ethical Culture is one of the finest works of the architect Robert D. Kohn and one of the few buildings in New York City designed in the Art Nouveau style. Built in 1909-10, the building provided an appropriate meeting place for the Society, and it became a tangible symbol of the Society's work.

The New York Society for Ethical Culture was founded in 1876 by Dr. Felix Adler, son of a Reformed Jewish rabbi, who had himself been trained in the rabbinical tradition. On May 15 of that year Dr. Adler addressed an organization meeting of several hundred people at Standard Hall on 42nd Street and Broadway.

The Ethical Movement as conceived by Adler was intended "to unite in one group, in one bond, those who had this religious feeling and those who simply cared for moral betterment ... Our ethical religion has its basis in the effort to improve the world and ourselves morally."

The organization grew rapidly and moved from its original meeting place at Standard Hall to Chickering Hall and then in 1892 to Carnegie Hall. Dr. Adler also trained interested young men as Leaders who founded new Societies throughout the United States.

One of the Society's most important activities was its school which set up a system of "unsectarian moral instruction ... to demonstrate practically how ethical ideas might be conveyed to the minds of children independently of theological dogmas."

In 1897 a committee was appointed to find a site and raise funds for a permanent Society building. The school building at 63rd Street and Central Park West, designed by the firm of Carrere & Hastings--with Robert D. Kohn as associated architect—opened in 1904. Kohn, a close friend of Felix Adler, designed the meeting house at 64th Street and Central Park West which was built in 1909-10.

Kohn was a pioneer in his use of the Art Nouveau style for this building, as heretofore it had come to the United States from Europe only in the form of architectural fittings and objets d'art. Kohn received his architectural training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and his Art Nouveau work grew out of the Beaux-Arts style.

Working with his wife, the sculptor Estelle Rumbold Kohn, they achieved a new architecture to adorn the city both in the Ethical Culture building and in the New York Evening Post building. It is of particular significance that Kohn was not only the architect for the Ethical Culture meeting house but was at one time a Leader of the congregation and served as President, of the Society from 1921-44.

A contemporary account in Architecture magazine states "... the Ethical Culture Society's building is certainly quite the best piece of Art Nouveau architecture yet designed in this country, and compares well with the magnificent German department store buildings whose excellence is so great as to almost promise a future for this style."