Korean Methodist Church and Institute

633 West 115th Street | Morningside Heights | built 1920

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.

1893
Henry Otis Chapman builds twin homes for two Columbia professors
Architect Henry Otis Chapman completed a pair of mirror-image, four-story Colonial Revival houses at 633 and 635 West 115th Street in 1893 for Columbia law professor Francis M. Burdick and his colleague Munroe Smith, who had bought the adjoining lots shortly before, anticipating Columbia's planned move to Morningside Heights. Yellow brick walls, brown terra-cotta trim, and neo-Federal doorways distinguished the pair.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
1911
Burdick sells his house to a Columbia fraternity
In 1911 Francis Burdick sold No. 633 to the Phil Omega Building Corporation, an entity of Columbia's Alpha Chi Rho fraternity, which used the lower floors as its clubhouse and leased the upper floors to fraternity alumni.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
1927
The Korean Methodist Church and Institute buys the building
The Korean Methodist Church and Institute purchased 633 West 115th Street in 1927, continuing to lease rooms on the upper floors to members while using the lower floors for the institute's programs serving Korean immigrants in Morningside Heights.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
2019
A renovation lowers the entrance and removes the stoop
A 2019 restoration removed the building's original stoop and lowered its entrance to street level, while preserving the leaded-glass sidelights of the Colonial Revival doorway; the flanking Ionic columns were not reinstalled.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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