
Grace Institute
by Katherine Taylor-Hasty
Today, the Grace Institute’s headquarters are at 40 Rector Street; but the Institute has not always been there. Its original location, where it was founded, was at 149-155 West 60th Street. This article will follow the storied life of that original building, which served as the institute’s home from 1897 until 1963 when the construction of Fordham University forced the Institute to move.
The Institute:
The Grace Institute is a nonprofit educational institution headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1897 by Irish immigrant shipping magnate and former two-time Mayor of New York, William R. Grace, his brother, Michael Grace, and the philanthropist Grace Dodge, the Institute provides “a tuition-free program to educate and support women in need – especially immigrant women.” According to its website, since its founding, the Institute has helped enable over 100,000 women to enter the workforce through its programs.[1]
…the Institute provides “a tuition-free program to educate and support women in need – especially immigrant women.”
Primarily run and staffed by the Sisters of Charity, Grace Institute’s curriculum has, since its founding, consisted primarily of courses that help women obtain skills in fields that typically hire women. The 1898 curriculum guide listed courses in “cookery, millinery, child care, Red Cross, children’s sewing, and dressmaking.” As jobs available to women expanded, so did the course offerings at the Institute. By 1900 curriculum guides regularly listed courses in “typing, bookkeeping and stenography” as women strove to obtain jobs in the rapidly expanding professional fields and stay out of the grueling factories. The early 1900s saw Grace Institute turn its focus to professional secretarial training. The Institute’s secretarial training program turned out young women well-qualified for the business world through classes in “shorthand, telephone technique, secretarial procedures, and business law.”[2]
The Building:
When the Grace family decided to start their technical school for women and girls, they purchased the old mansion home of James Moore at 153 West 60th Street. This multi-lot estate consisted of a main house, gardens, orchards, and stables. The house itself had three stories, an English basement, and a high mansard roof, all in the day’s latest architectural styles and fashions.[3] The purchase was announced in the May 28, 1897 edition of The New York Times: “William M. Ryan has sold for the heirs of the late Thomas Moore to the Grace Institute, for $32,000, the old three-story stone mansion, 153 West Sixtieth Street….”[4] The $32,000 that the Institute paid in 1897 would be closer to $1 million today.
Among the many necessary alterations to make the property fit to house, the Grace Institute was an addition to each end of the original house. One of these extensions included a large laundry room where the institute’s pupils were taught “every branch of laundry work.” The room contained “eight large porcelain tubs…a gas range for heating irons, a gas drying over of the latest patter…boilers of approved design… [and] six heavy ironing tables.”[5]
The floor above the laundry room was outfitted with a state-of-the-art kitchen. According to one New York Herald writer, the kitchen had been “fitted up to make glad the heart of the housewife, and calculated to render good cooking attractive to women.”[6] The writer described the space as more of a laboratory rather than solely a kitchen, emphasizing how students would learn the nutritional value of different dishes and how to make them.[7]
…the kitchen had been “fitted up to make glad the heart of the housewife, and calculated to render good cooking attractive to women.”
The Move:
The enormity of the Lincoln Center project forced Grace Institute out of its first home, and into a new building on Second Avenue, between 64th and 65th Streets, in 1963. According to the New York Times, the new building cost the Institute $5,500,000. Despite the move, Grace Institute continued to be staffed by the Sisters of Charity of Mount St. Vincent, maintaining the Institute’s deep religious connections and affiliations. The new building was even dedicated by Cardinal Francis Spellman, Archbishop of New York.[8] The Institute did not remain at that location. In 2015 they made yet another move; this time to 40 Rector Street, where they set up a brand-new office training center.[9]
References
[1] Grace Institute, “Our Story,” Grace Institute, April 8, 2020, https://graceinstitute.org/about/.
[2] Grace Institute, “Our Story,” Grace Institute, April 8, 2020
[3] Tom Miller, “Daytonian in Manhattan,” Daytonian in Manhattan (blog), November 4, 2019, http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-lost-grace-institute-149-155-west.html.
[4] “In The Real Estate Field: Private Sales — Two Valuable Properties Sold In Foreclosure.” New York Times (1857-1922), May 28, 1897.
[5] Tom Miller, “Daytonian in Manhattan,” Daytonian in Manhattan (blog), November 4, 2019
[6] New York Herald, January 30, 1898
[7] Tom Miller, “Daytonian in Manhattan,” Daytonian in Manhattan (blog), November 4, 2019
[8] “Grace Institute Building Dedicated by Spellman.” New York Times (1923-Current File), Sep 21, 1963.
[9] Grace Institute, “Our Story,” Grace Institute, April 8, 2020
Katherine Taylor-Hasty is a PhD candidate at UCLA Berkeley