page_title: West Presbyterian Church
section_title: Thomas S. Hastings
hierarchical_section_title: West Presbyterian Church / Thomas S. Hastings
caption_attribution_description: English: West Presbyterian Church (New York City).Caption reads:“Dr. Hastings’ old church -- the West Presbyterian -- Forty-second Street"1876, now [1920] site of Aeolian Hall.”
context_page_description: West Presbyterian Church was a congregation and two houses of worship in Manhattan, New York City. The congregation was founded in 1829, and merged in 1911 with Park Presbyterian Church to form West-Park Presbyterian Church. The first house of worship, also known as the Carmine Street Presbyterian Church, in Greenwich Village, was used from 1832 to 1865, and the second, on West 42nd Street between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue, from 1865 until 1911, when it was sold and demolished. Proceeds from the sale were used, in accordance with the merger agreement, to build and endow a church for an underserved neighborhood, Washington Heights: Fort Washington Presbyterian Church. In addition, the West Church congregation had earlier established two mission churches which eventually merged to become Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church. West-Park, Fort Washington, and Good Shepherd-Faith are all active today.
  West Church's most prominent pastors were Thomas S. Hastings, 1856–1881, who later became President of Union Theological Seminary, and John R. Paxton, 1882–1893, whose popular sermons attracted, for a time, many wealthy and powerful businessmen as members.
context_section_description: In 1856, Rev. Thomas S. Hastings became pastor. The congregation grew steadily until in 1860 it had need of larger quarters, and Hastings moved his congregation to West 42nd Street, where there was much room and land was relatively cheap.
  The trustees first engaged the chapel of Rutgers Female Institute on 42nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. A new chapel, designed by Foster & Babb (George Fletcher Babb and Nathaniel G. Foster), was built and dedicated in 1862. The new church, designed by Jacob Wrey Mould in Victorian Gothic style, was dedicated in 1865 on the Rutgers site.
  Thomas Samuel Hastings was born in Utica, N. Y., August 28, 1827, son of the well-known church musician Thomas Hastings. He graduated from Hamilton College in 1848 and from Union Theological Seminary in 1851. His first pastorate was in Mendham, N. J., from 1852 to 1856, when he was called to the pastorate of West Church. Rev. Hastings received the Doctor of Divinity degree from the University of the City of New York in 1865.
  In 1881, Hastings ended his 25-year-long pastorate at West to join the faculty of Union Theological Seminary, where he remained for another quarter century, during which he served from 1888 to 1897 as the school's president. Rev. Dr. Hastings died suddenly at home on April 2, 1911, age 83.
caption: Church on 42nd Street, 1876
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