HISTORY NOW!
Vanderbilt University Coming to the General Theological Seminary
By Brian J Pape, AIA, LEED-AP
The Chapel of the Good Shepherd, completed in 1888, became known as the “Jewel of Chelsea Square.” It is located on the campus of the General Theological Seminary called The Close. There is a new agreement to share this campus with Nashville’s Vanderbilt University. Photo courtesy GTS.
General Theological Seminary’s (GTS) new 99-year lease agreement with Vanderbilt University (VU) allows Vanderbilt to operate on GTS’ 2.7-acre site encompassing 13 buildings in Chelsea, known as the Close (formerly W. 20th to 21st streets, Ninth to Tenth avenues).
The Very Rev. Ian S. Markham, president of the General Theological Seminary, said, “The General Theological Seminary is seeking to adapt to a changing world. Following the introduction of our hybrid MDiv which combines online learning with in-person intensives, we found a mission-compatible tenant, which guarantees we continue to operate out of our historic home.”
The lease provides GTS with access to more than double the accommodations on the Close for students and to introduce additional in-person programing, such as continuing education weeks for alumni.
For its part, Nashville-based Vanderbilt released a statement, “The Chelsea location will create not only opportunities for students in Nashville, but for expanding research partnerships, increasing engagement with businesses and organizations around the world, and supporting the more than 7,800 alumni and 740 current students who call the New York area home.”
In March, the university launched Vanderbilt in the City: Conversations on America, a three-part lecture series that drew over 600 attendees. VU also appointed James Kellerhouse as assistant vice chancellor for strategic initiatives in New York City, with plans to establish undergraduate “study-away” programs and a one-year master’s degree.
This sketch of the General Theological Seminary shows the campus prior to 2012, before the Brodsky Organization bought several GTS buildings, but after they built the condo on Ninth Avenue on the far right. At the far left is the High Line Hotel (a former GTS dorm). The chapel is in the center of the Close. Credit: Beyer Blinder Belle Architects and YIMBY.
GTS has educated and formed church leaders for more than 200 years. Historically, the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church was founded in 1817, making “General” the Episcopal Church’s oldest and once most prominent school for training clergy. According to the neighborhood chronicler, Chelsea’s founder, Clement Clarke Moore, planned the seminary as an academic center with open grounds that would double as a village green for the genteel community he hoped to establish. The block’s educational conception is inextricable with Moore’s passion for scholarship, which found an outlet in his role as a professor of Greek and Hebrew at the seminary. The campus of his day, starting in 1827, had two main buildings, only one still stands. The block’s architectural excellence rests on the planning of architect Charles Coolidge Haight’s late-nineteenth-century Collegiate Gothic buildings.
Like many mainline Protestant seminaries, it has fallen on hard times in recent years, and is in need of tens of millions of dollars of long-deferred maintenance work. In 2021 the school replaced its residential student body with a hybrid online/in-person Master of Divinity program and has little need for the dorm rooms and modest apartments that formerly housed students.
The GTS campus, in the Chelsea Historic District, has not been dormant. Since it was completed in the late 1800s as a U-shaped set of buildings facing a student quadrant, it complimented the townhouses surrounding its sun-filled Close. Starting in 2010, GTS began selling buildings to the Brodsky Organization, including the Chelsea Enclave, a residential condominium which replaced Sherrill Hall at the Ninth Avenue streetfront, conversions at 422 West 20th Street across from the Close, the 2012 $18.5 million sale of 445 West 20th Street, a now sleek contemporary façade, and the High Line Hotel at 180 Tenth Avenue.
The hotel, an 1895 red brick Collegiate Gothic jewel originally built as student housing for GTS, opened in May 2013 with 60 oversized, light-filled rooms that blend vintage details with modern amenities. The High Line Hotel is operated by MCR, the third largest hotel owner-operator in the United States.
The General Theological Seminary lease arrangement is not a merger. GTS will continue to operate as a separate entity with its own distinct identity and programming on the Close for decades to come. It will also see building improvements carried out, and enable the seminary to expand its highly successful Master of Divinity degree and potentially introduce new programming. The news was warmly received by the local residents and preservation groups.
