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NYC – Murray Hill: Church of the Transfiguration
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The Church of the Transfiguration, also known as the Little Church Around the Corner, located at 1 East 29th Street, is an Episcopal parish church built and consecrated in 1849 in an early English Neo-Gothic style. The architect of the sanctuary, which is set back from the street behind an English-style churchyard, has not been identified. Over the years, many additions to the complex, which have earned the name "Holy Cucumber Vine," have been made– a guildhall, transepts, and tower were added to in 1852; the lych-gate, designed by Frederick C. Withers, was built in 1896; the lady chapels was added in 1906 and the mortuary chapel in 1908.
The congregation was founded in 1848 by the Rev. Dr. George Hendric Houghton and worshiped in a home at 48 East 29th Street until the church was built and consecrated in 1849. From its early days, the church was a leader in the Anglo-Catholic movement within the Episcopal church. During the Civil War Draft Riots in 1863, the church provided sanctuary to African Americans under attack.
The Church has a longstanding association with the theater. In 1870 when the nearby Church of the Atonement refused to conduct funeral services for actor George Holland, rector William Sabine remarked " I believe there is a little church around the corner where they do that sort of thing." It is from tale that the church earned its nickname as the "Little Church Around the Corner." In 1914, playwright and lyricist P. G. Wodehouse married his wife Ethel at the church, and would go on to set most of his fictionalized weddings there. The hit musical Sally, that Wodehouse cowrote with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton, ended with the company singing in tribute to the Bohemian congregation: "Dear little, dear little Church ‘Round the Corner / Where so many lives have begun, / Where folks without money see nothing that’s funny / In two living cheaper than one."
In 1923, the Episcopal Actors’ Guild held its first meeting at Transfiguration. Such theatrical greats as Basil Rathbone, Tallulah Bankhead, Peggy Wood, Joan Fontaine, Rex Harrison, Barnard Hughes, and Charlton Heston have served as officers or council members of the guild. The Little Church’s association with the theatre continued in the 1970s, when it hosted the Joseph Jefferson Theatre Company, which gave starts to actors such as Armand Assante, Tom Hulce, and Rhea Perlman. As well as being a guild officer, Sir Rex Harrison was memorialized at the church upon his death in 1990.
The Church of the Transfiguration was designated a landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1967.
National Register #73001216 (1973)
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