New York's Floating Chapels

In 1844, a Floating Chapel for sailors was built at the foot of Pike Street in Manhattan's East River. It was built by the Young Men's Missionary Society, constructed on a 76" long dock and was the size of two 80-ton boats. The chapel building was 70" long and 30" wide, accommodating about 350 people inside. The services were Episcopal.

There was, in the 1840s, a second Floating Chapel in New York, docked in the North River at the foot of Rector Street. It had been opened in June 1845 in an old ship weighing 300 tons, and had a Swedish pastor, O.E. Hedstrom, who gave services in both Swedish and English.

The Pike Street Floating Chapel lasted until 1866. For three years Bethel services were held on land "in a room near the dock," according to The Sailor's Magazine and Seaman's Friend. By 1869 a new Floating Chapel had been built at a cost of $23,000, "a plain Gothic structure" that would last until 1910.

The Floating Chapel illustration is from Francis's Stranger's Handbook for the City of New York (1854), facing p. 114.

Sources

American Seaman's Friend Society, The Sailor's Magazine and Seaman's Friend (vols. 41-2), p. 57.

Francis, C.S. The Stranger's Handbook for the City of New York (New York, 1854), pp. 114, 122, 127.

Johnson, Harry and Frederick S. Lightfoot, Maritime New York and nineteenth-century photographs (1980), p. 80.

Ruggles, Edward, A Picture of New-York in 1846 (New York, 1846), pp 137-8.

See also The Hedstroms and the Bethel Ship Saga (1992) by Henry C. Whyman, for more on the North River Floating Church.

The map detail is from an 1879 NYC map at Wikimedia Commons; the purple dot (at lower left) shows the Swedish Floating Bethel at Rector Street; the orange dot (at upper right) shows the Floating Chapel at Pike Street; bigger version here.