Adams Memorial Presbyterian Church, 30th Street between Second Avenue and Third Avenue, New York City, 1913.
1913
Adams Memorial Presbyterian Church, 30th Street between Second Avenue and Third Avenue, New York City, 1913.
Adams Memorial Church, 1942.
Architect J.Cleaveland Cady designed this church with the double spires as the Adams-Parkhurst Memorial Presbyterian Church. It was a mission church of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, just a few blocks away. Dedicated in 1875 over the next decades it was home not only the Adams-Parkhurst church but also a German Lutheran congregation and an Armenian Evangelical Church.
Left empty and abandoned after a stint as a radio station, the church became the CBS 30th Street Studio from 1948 to 1981. The Columbia Records studio was the location of thousands of recordings, including Miles Davis' Kind of Blue (1959), Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (Original Broadway Cast recording, 1957), and Pink Floyd's The Wall (1979). It was aptly nicknamed "the Church."
Columbia Records moved out in 1981, and after changing hands a few times, the building was razed and replaced with a 10-story apartment building called "The Wilshire," completed in 1985.