Cuyler lived at Pike and Madison Streets and later in Rutgers Street. His salary was $1,500, advanced later to $2,500. The church building was painted, and in 1855 a new roof was put on at the expense of the pewholders.
Opposite the church on the northeast corner was a large and select private school. At 11 Market Street later was a smaller one, headed by a German patriot, whose son-in-law was one of the great generals during the Rebellion.
In his address in the church at the Eightieth Anniversary, Dr. Cuyler called it "fighting the adversary of souls and geography," for even in Dr. Ferris's time there were indications of waning strength because of "the continued emigration of the more substantial class of church members from the down-town districts of the city uptown."
Cuyler at Market Street
But the indefatigable Cuyler postponed the evil day, and for seven years of intensest activity he remained in Market Street.
To quote Dr. Cuyler: "I looked around me and saw there were a good many substantial families that could support a church and East Broadway swarmed with young men."
"Here was the lord of the manor, the nephew of Colonel Rutgers, Wm. B. Crosby. What a devoted Christian he was. His good old gray head moved up to the pew every Sunday, rain or shine. There was a deacons' pew, and in the center sat the best-known man in New York, Judge Joseph Hoxie. When we said the creed and nobody joined he shouted it, and in song his voice was heard above the choir. There sat Jacob Westervelt, the mayor of New York, and he boasted that he was the only member of the Dutch Church who could read a Dutch Bible."