True Light Lutheran Church
195 Worth Street | also 191 Worth Street | Chinatown | built 1948
Open on the map5 entries
The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1909
Helen F. Clark runs her mission for Chinese residents at 195 Worth Street
Before the church stood here, 195 Worth Street was a tenement, and by 1909 it housed the Helen Clark Mission, which the missionary Helen F. Clark founded and directed. A New York Herald item from June 1909 shows the address. Clark argued that white women missionaries should leave Chinese lives alone, since in her view more of them were degraded by Chinese men than Chinese were converted.
Source: bedfordandbowery.com
- 1911
Police find 300 pounds of opium in a top-floor apartment at 195 Worth Street
In 1911 the Jamaica Daily reported that Goon Chong, an Americanized Chinese man who lived on the top floor of the tenement at 195 Worth Street, had been arrested for keeping about 300 pounds of opium at home. The drug was valued at up to $50,000. The corner had already been tamed since the Worth Street extension opened up the old Five Points slum, but it was not crime-free.
Source: bedfordandbowery.com
- 1935
Mary Banta and Chinese Methodists found the Sunday school that becomes True Light Lutheran Church
After more than 30 years of serving a large Methodist congregation and working with Chinese immigrants, Mary Banta heard The Lutheran Hour on the radio and felt drawn to Lutheran teaching. In 1935 she joined Chinese members in opening a Sunday school called True Light, in a loft they rented over Canal Street. In 1936 the Missouri Synod recognized it as a mission congregation, and it afterward relocated to Worth Street.
Source: engage.lcms.org
- 1946
True Light signs the contract for a dilapidated tenement at 195 Worth Street for $65,000
After its landlord on Canal Street refused to renew the lease, True Light's leaders found a run-down tenement at 195 Worth Street. Pastor Louis T. Buchheimer persuaded the Lutheran Church's Atlantic District to underwrite the $65,000 price, and the contract was signed on December 23, 1946. Baptist Home Missions and the Missouri Synod then helped with an estimated $200,000 in renovation costs.
Source: bedfordandbowery.com
- 1949
True Light Lutheran Church holds its first dedication service in a Chinese-style building by Meyers and Guenther
Supporters marched through Chinatown on May 29, 1949 to celebrate the new building, and the first dedication service followed on September 25, with a public opening about a week later. Architects Ralph S. Meyers and Bernard W. Guenther gave it a pagoda motif over the door, the church's name in Chinese characters and a pagoda-shaped canopy over the altar. Writer David Dunlap called the result Sino-Deco-Gothic.
Source: bedfordandbowery.com
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