Religion & Finance

In old prints of lower Manhattan Island, the outstanding feature is a slim spire rising high above the shops, residences and counting houses around it--the spire of Trinity Church. Nowadays the only distant prospect of Trinity spire is up that chasm of counting houses from which residences long ago departed, Wall Street.

But the growing magnificence of the money-changers has by no means smothered religion in the Wall Street district. Only last week a new orthodox Jewish synagog opened its doors there for the first time. The synagog is merely an office building room given by Benjamin E. Greenspan, a lawyer. Some day he hopes to build a fitting edifice on the roof of one of the skyscrapers. Once indifferent to religion, Lawyer Greenspan found fresh faith two years ago when his eldest daughter miraculously escaped Death. Thereafter he prayed during every office day. Last week more than 100 Jews went to his synagog's first service. When the skyscraper synagog is built, it will doubtless contain many a rich memorial to and from men of great wealth, just as Trinity's bronze doors memorialize John Jacob Astor, and its reredos and altar, William Backhouse Astor.

Wall Street used, of course, to be the centre of New York City and near it stand the oldest landmarks. St. Paul's Chapel (Manhattan's oldest) where George Washington and New York's first Governor, George Clinton, worshipped, is five blocks from Wall Street. St. Peter's, Manhattan's oldest Catholic church, rises in the shadow of the Woolworth Building. In 1766, in John Street, the first U. S. Methodist-Episcopal society opened its first chapel. Daily services are still held in John Street.