Few men have been in touch with so many public movements as Dr. Cuyler. He was the personal friend of statesmen, churchmen, professors, lecturers, teachers, philanthropists, diplomats, poets and presidents. And as was the minister so were the people of the Market Street church: forward in every movement for the betterment of mankind, the coming of the kingdom. Some of the best families of New York were connected there, and as fathers bought pews for the sons when they married it was a family church. These names are frequent: Duryee, Crosby, Mersereau, Brinkerhoff, Poillon, Zophar Mills, Ludlam, Suydam, Westervelt, Waydell, Chittenden, Bartlett, McKee, Purdy and a host of others.
Small wonder that from among men like these great institutions should come, that the Park Bank and the Nassau Bank should be founded by Market Street church men. The annual pew rents were $5,000, then a large sum.
Perhaps it was their very farsightedness that made the people of the church think of moving uptown. The "brownstone front" was drawing people northward, and Dr. Cuyler started a movement "to erect a new edifice on Murray Hill, and to retain the old building in Market Street as an auxiliary mission chapel." Subscriptions were secured, William E. Dodge heading the list. But the new site at Park Avenue and Thirty-fifth Street did not find favor, and many were opposed to the whole project, so when in 1860 the consistory was to vote the first payment, the whole enterprise failed by one vote.
Dr. Cuyler said he would thank the good old man who cast that vote—Meade was his name—if he ever met him in the other world. He resigned from Market Street church, his ministry ending April 7, 1860, and accepted a call from the little Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn. His friend, Henry Ward Beecher, did not see how he could get a congregation there, but after many years of ever-increasing usefulness Mr. Beecher lived to say to Dr. Cuyler: "You are now in the center, and I am out on the circumference."
It was strange that a man of the forceful type of Cuyler should leave a church because it would not move away, and that thirty years later he should preach in it, rejoicing in its continuing prosperity. Strange, too, that Cuyler left the Dutch Church for the Presbyterian, and that the old building "changed its faith" in like manner.
Rev. Chauncey D. Murray was the next pastor of the Market Street church, the classis installing him March 10, 1861, and he was succeeded in 1863 by Rev. Jacob C. Dutcher. William B. Crosby, of beloved memory, came forward with very liberal contributions to sustain the church, but the depletion went on. In Mr. Murray's time another attempt to move uptown had failed.
In December, 1859, the courts had already given permission for a sale, but on condition that another church be built uptown with the proceeds. This having failed, under a revised order of the court the building was deeded to Hanson K. Corning in 1866, another congregation having meanwhile inaugurated services there.
The old consistory lived on till June 2, 1869, when it held its last meeting at the home of R. R. Crosby, in Twenty-second Street. A committee had secured the necessary legal modifications so that the temporalities could be disposed of. The distribution was as follows: