City of Faith: The “Secular” City

Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, cartography by Molly Roy, and design by Lia Tjandra
Black Star Lines: Harlem Secular and Sacred [from Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas]
2016
Reproduction
Courtesy of Rebecca Solnit, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, and University of California Press

In Harlem—originally a Lenape village and later a Dutch colony, an immigrant enclave, and eventually a Black Mecca—religious and secular phenomena alike can be considered “sacred.” As the mapmakers note, the neighborhood is home to “Jesus and jazz, Allah and hip-hop, freedom and fame.” Here, religious leaders wield political power and performers mix pop and gospel. Churches and theaters sometimes occupy the same buildings. Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington are icons. And the Apollo Theater, Mother Zion, Masjid Malcolm Shabazz, and other institutions are revered sites.  

LEFT
Making Space for Religion in Queens 

Queens has a long history of religious pluralism, but the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act significantly increased the diversity of religions practiced in the borough. Beginning in the 1970s, large numbers of people began arriving to the borough from Bangladesh, India, China, Korea, Jamaica, Haiti, Guyana, Suriname, Colombia, Ecuador, and other countries. With its highly flexible built environment, the borough gives the different faith communities from these countries multiple options for establishing religious institutions.  

Urbanist and educator Joseph Heathcott uses photography to study the city’s “recombinant landscapes”. The monumental and mundane religious structures of Queens are a growing focus of his visual practice. This slideshow animates Heathcott’s photographs of religious environments to illustrate the visual, functional, and symbolic opportunities and complexities of these spaces, and to show how they contribute to the ever-changing religious geography of Queens. 

Joseph Heathcott
[Photographs from the series “Religious Diversity in the Borough of Queens”]
2014–2022  
Courtesy of the artist

PROJECTION

Every group that establishes itself in Queens articulates the religious life of its community through the built environment.

A: Kissena Jewish Center, Flushing
B: Geeta Temple Ashram, Woodside
C: Transfiguration Roman Catholic Church, Maspeth
D: Mimar Sinan Mosque, Sunnyside

Indeed, one of the keys to the great diversity of Queens is its highly flexible urban landscape, which gives communities multiple options for establishing homes, businesses, and civic institutions and of course religious institutions.

A: Calvary Assembly of God, Ozone Park
B: Shri Guru Ravidass Temple, Woodside
C: Safe Harbor Ministries, Richmond Hill
D: Om Shakti Temple, Woodside

Over time, hundreds of religious structures—both purpose-built and converted, and modest and grand—have accumulated over the urban landscape. 

A: Satya Sanatan Sharma Mandir, Queens Village
B: Maha Lakshmi Mandir, Richmond Hill
C: Southern Baptist Church, Flushing
D: Elmhurst Islamic Center, Elmhurst

Some institutions with greater resources can create ground-up dedicated buildings for worship…

A: New York Hua Lian Tsu Hui, College Point
B: St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, Whitestone
C: Masjid Hazrati Abu Bakr Siddique, Flushing
D: Sri Maha Vallabha Ganapati Temple, Flushing

…resulting in a rich architectural legacy that often stands in contrast to the mundane residential and commercial surroundings.

A: St. Nicholas Romanian Orthodox, Sunnyside
B: St. Raphael, Long Island City
C: Geeta Temple Ashram Inc, Flushing
D: Sikh Center, Flushing

Meanwhile, communities that do not have similar resources improvise by adapting existing buildings for religious life. 

A: Gawsiah Jam-e Masjid, Astoria
B: Shree Sundar Gopal Mandir, Ozone Park
C: Seva Ashram, Ozone Park
D: Mimar Sinan Mosque, Sunnyside

Diverse congregations make use of a wide variety of spaces, from older devotional structures to warehouses, factories, strip malls, storefronts, and houses.

A: Iglesia Jesús Mi Salvador and Han Ghil Presbyterian Church of New York, Corona
B: Fan Yin Monastery, Flushing
C: Faith Theological Seminary, Flushing
D: Al Madni Masjid, East Elmhurst

For example, these four religious institutions were formerly commercial spaces. They have been transformed into sacred spaces through the addition of signage and portal, as well as other alterations. 

A: Geeta Temple Ashram, Woodside
B: Masjid Al-Hikmah, Woodside
C: Shri Guru Ravidass Temple, Woodside
D: Safe Harbor Ministries, Richmond Hill

The result is an ever-changing and striking religious geography, a mosaic of the spiritual life of diverse communities across the borough. 

A: Om Shakti Temple, Woodside
B: New York Dhammaram Temple, East Elmhurst
C: Evangelical Church, Corona
D: Iglesia Jesús Mi Salvador and Han Ghil Presbyterian Church of New York, Corona

The scales of religion—its spaces and iconography—can vary dramatically. From figurines on store shelves and icons in front yards to statues on pedestals.

A: Blessed Virgin, Woodside
B: Calvary Cemetery, Maspeth
C: Statue of Mary at St. Adalbert, Maspeth
Figurines for Sale

Despite this rich diversity of religious landscapes, for some communities the path to recognition and acceptance is not linear. For example, after 9/11, the NYPD engaged in secret and suspicionless surveillance of mosques in New York City.

On other occasions, it has been difficult for some residents of these neighborhoods to conceive of houses of worship outside the confines of Christianity.

The construction of mosques and temples in Flushing elicited this response from a resident: “These churches don’t even look like real churches. You know, a Hindu temple just doesn’t fit into our architecture here.” (Newsday, Sunday, February 25, 1990).

A: Sri Maha Vallabha Ganapati Temple, Flushing
B: Masjid Hazrati Abu Bakr Siddique, Flushing
C: Sikh Center, Flushing
D: Hindu Center, Flushing

Whether adapted or purpose-built, religious buildings serve as a signal that a group has arrived and put down roots. It is one of the most important ways in which communities assert themselves in the urban landscape.

Unknown Name and Location
B: New York Hindu Sanatan Mandir, East Elmhurst
C: Al-Iman Mosque, Astoria
Unknown Name and Location

The "Secular" City

Despite New York’s reputation for secularism—understood popularly as the separation of religion from the public sphere—faith, spirituality, and religion are part of the flow of the city’s environment and urban spaces. This entwinement dates back to the area’s original inhabitants, the Lenape, whose mythologies and religious practices were integrated with the land. The violent displacement of indigenous communities by waves of European settlers changed the land’s relationship to religion, and resulted in new types of urban-religious landscape

Historically, Protestantism dominated the city until the 19th century, when Jews and Catholics began arriving in larger numbers. Together, these three groups have inscribed their presence on the map of New York City in ways seen and unseen—whether in its built environment, foodways, politics, social services, or culture. Although South Asian communities had been in New York for sometime, and Black Muslim communities even longer, since 1965 the presence of these groups has expanded dramatically, and the trend of religious imprint on the secular city continues. This section provides a few glimpses into the “ground” established by the city’s three dominant religious groups, within which other religious—and religiously profiled—communities must claim space for themselves.

Matt Kieffer  
Saks Fifth Avenue Christmas Lights, New York
January 2, 2017
Reproduction
Courtesy of Matt Kieffer

LEFT
Harvey Cox
The Secular City
1965
Paper and ink
Private collection

In this classic book, theologian Harvey Cox argues that secularization and urbanization are not at odds with religion; rather, they have the potential to create a pluralistic society, giving urbanites a greater choice of worldviews. Arguing that God is not confined to specific spaces or spheres, Cox suggests that modern technologies of mobility and communication— such as the telephone switchboard or the cloverleaf intersection—could become tools of religion and allow new kinds of community to emerge.

The book was published in 1965, a year that is both central to the communities in this exhibition and one that they also transcend.  It is the year that the Immigration and Nationality, or Hart-Cellar, Act lifted racist quotas that had restricted immigration largely to Northern and Western Europeans. This further diversified the country’s religious makeup, which had been primarily Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish.

Religion’s presence in New York was often conveyed through structures like steeples. Until the 1890s, the city’s tallest building was Trinity Church, whose towering spire signaled the influence of Protestantism in the city’s life. By the early 20th century, skyscrapers were overshadowing Trinity, causing anxiety amongst Protestant leaders. As author Henry James lamented in 1904, the spire was “...cruelly overtopped and so barely distinguishable, from your train-bearing barge…in its abject helpless humility...” 

However, height and visibility are not the only measures of religion’s physical footprint.  To this day, religious institutions, big and small, own New York property that collectively is worth billions of dollars, though not all of it is explicitly religious in appearance or function.

TOP
Unknown maker
[Map of Trinity Church property between Fulton and Christopher Streets, Broadway and the Hudson River, part one of three]
1877
Reproduction
Museum of the City of New York. Gift of an anonymous donor, 49.261A

In an era before church-state separation, when Queen Anne granted Trinity 215 acres, the church became the second-largest landowner in the city and a powerful landlord; it still controls 14 acres of this original grant. The Catholic archdiocese is another significant landowner. 

LEFT
Kimmel & Forster Birds Eye View of New York and Environs
c.1865
Reproduction
Museum of the City of New York. The J. Clarence Davies Collection. Gift of J. Clarence Davies, 29.100.2028

BOTTOM
Albert A. Levering for Puck magazine
“The Future of Trinity Church”
1907
Reproduction
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-5197

Religion and Political Power

Religious institutions are sites of political power. In Harlem for example, churches and mosques were inextricably linked with the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., New York’s first Black City Council Member and New York State’s first Black Congressman, rose to political office from his position as pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church. Political candidates regularly make pilgrimages to this and other churches, owing to their importance in Black communities. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. also famously appeared at Abyssinian and nearby Riverside Church. 

The choice of religion is also political. Malcolm X rejected Christianity as white slavers’ imposition on Black Americans. Instead, he joined the Nation of Islam (NOI), rising to second in command before eventually breaking with the organization in 1964. He was the leader of Harlem’s famous Temple No. 7 and helped found Muhammad Speaks, NOI’s official organ. The photo above shows him selling a  special issue of the paper.

TOP
Gordon Parks
[Malcolm X]
1963
Reproduction
Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation 

LEFT
Dave Pickoff
[The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., right, and Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, at a news conference at the Abyssinian Baptist Church]
November 14, 1965
Reproduction
AP Images

Entire religious ecosystems can be tethered to the built environment in barely perceptible ways, as when Orthodox Jewish communities employ the Talmudic concept of the eruv. By symbolically converting streets and sidewalks into “domestic” space, these religious boundary systems allow community members to overcome the prohibition on carrying items outside their homes during the Sabbath.  

An eruv’s boundaries may incorporate waterways, the edges of highways, or other types of infrastructure. Fishing lines strung between telephone poles and other structures can also make “fences.” In the U.S., while the eruv is designed to be architecturally discreet—most of us walk around in one without knowing it—an observer may gauge its presence by the increased visibility of Orthodox Jewish communities on the ground.

TOP
Yehoshua Segal
[Map showing boundaries of the first eruv from Eruv ve Hotza’ah]
1907
Reproduction
Courtesy of The Jewish Theological Seminary Library

New York’s first eruv was on Manhattan’s East Side, where water on three sides and the elevated train on the fourth created a “walled” area. Despite the shaded areas on both sides of the El in this map, the eruv is only in the Jewish neighborhoods to the east. The El was destroyed in the 1950s, taking the eruv with it, but longer-lasting eruvin were later created, first in Staten Island and then, in 1974, in Queens.

SLIDESHOW
These images trace the infrastructure and materials that help create an eruv, ranging from bits of tinsel to elevated train tracks.

Margaret Olin
[Photographs from the series “Unlocking the Eruv”]
2010–ongoing  
Courtesy of Margaret Olin 

Berenice Abbott
[“El” Second and Third Avenue lines, Hanover Square and Pearl Street]
March 6, 1936
Museum of the City of New York. Gift of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 89.2.1.55

Visualizing Religion

Artists and historians use a variety of media to explore and make visible some of the more normalized religions in the city. For 20 years, street photographer Greg Miller has been documenting Ash Wednesday, when New York’s Catholic communities become strikingly visible. In another example, mapmakers creatively explore the complexity of religion— in this case Judaism—and the many ways it is embodied and contested in the city. 

TOP
Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, cartography by Molly Roy, and design by Lia Tjandra
What is a Jew: From Emma Goldman to Goldman Sachs [from Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas]
2016
Reproduction
Courtesy of Rebecca Solnit, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, and University of California Press 

SLIDESHOW
Greg Miller
UNTO DUST
1997–ongoing
Courtesy of Greg Miller 

Photographer Greg Miller holds space for complexity in what appears at first to be a homogenous community: “As an observer, I am cautious about assuming what the mark of the ashes means for the faith of those who receive it. I used to think that all my subjects must be devout in some...singular or definable way. Yet through the years, in talking with over 300 subjects, I’ve learned that the physical practice of the ritual is the unifying feature for people whose faith is a varied, complex, living phenomenon.” 

Many of today’s city services were created or shaped by communities seeking to practice their faiths. New York’s extensive network of Catholic schools emerged out of conflicts between Catholic and Protestant communities over educational ideology and the use of the Protestant King James Bible. Jewish New Yorkers created a network of delicatessens to serve their dietary and food-preparation restrictions. Even the city’s suspension of alternate side parking rules is shaped by religion. 

TOP
Drew Angerer
[Customers wait in line outside for a table at the Carnegie Deli]
2016
Reproduction  
Getty Images News via Getty Images

LEFT
Keogh
St. Bridgets Parochial School
c. 1860
Reproduction
Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Harry Shaw Newman, 46.415

By 1858, nearly 15,000 Catholic pupils attended 43 separate Catholic schools in New York City.

RIGHT
New York City Department of Transportation  
[Alternate Side Parking Calendar in Bengali]
2022
Reproduction
Courtesy of the New York City Department of Transportation 

Originally, parking rules were suspended only on legal holidays and select religious holidays, such as Christmas and Yom Kippur. Over time, the City Council has included a greater range of religious holidays—reflecting the city’s steadily increasing diversity and communities’ steadily increasing power— such as Ash Wednesday, Asian Lunar New Year, Diwali, Eid al-Adha, and Eid al-Fitr.