Guide to the Labor Temple (New York, N.Y.) Records

In April 1910, a plan to start "a center of aggressive religious work among the working-men of New York City, under the name of Labor Temple" was read in the meeting of the Home Missions Committee of the Presbytery of New York. The Reverend Charles Stelzle of the Board of Home Missions had drawn up the plan, hoping to establish a common ground where working men and churchmen could meet as equals, to show working men the interest the church felt in their welfare, and to foster mutual understanding and cooperation between labor and the Church. Stelzle's idea was to use an empty church at the corner of 14th Street and Second Avenue, to gather there all workers and churchmen who wished to meet, and to hold open fora, lecture series and classes dealing with social issues. Though care would be taken to express the Christian viewpoint, Stelzle wanted Labor Temple to be a place in which all ideas could be heard. The Presbytery of New York approved the plan, and Stelzle was appointed the director of Labor Temple.

At first there was no formal church organization. In 1915, after petitioning by the men and women who came to the Temple, the American International Church (Presbyterian) was organized. Will Durant directed the Labor Temple School, which was formed early in the Temple's history and continued through the 1930s.

In 1943, the Board of National Missions' Unit of City and Industrial Work took over the responsibility for running Labor Temple. The Rev. Lawrence Hosie was appointed director. The Temple continued in its role as a community center, a meeting place for striking worker's unions, a club for children and adults, and a source of relief for the indigent.