Labor Temple Lectures

Collection — Box: 1

Identifier: SCM 298

Staff Only

Content Description

Thirty typewritten lectures on classic western civilization delivered at the Labor Temple in New York. Included are lectures given in 1938 on H.G. Wells' "The Anatomy of Frustration" and William Morris' "News from Nowhere." The collection also contains a series of eleven lectures on "Spiritual Values in World Literature" given in 1937 by Morris Gordin, labor activist, Russian revolutionary, and one-time Press Commissar of the Third International, according to a notice about the series.

Dates

1932 - 1941

Access

There are no special restrictions to access of this collection. It may be examined by library patrons under the normal rules and conditions of Special Collections.

Biographical / Historical

Charles Stelzle, a Presbyterian minister and director of the Bureau of Social Service of the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church, founded Labor Temple in New York City's Lower East Side in 1910 in a vacant brownstone at the corner of Second Avenue and Fourtheenth Street.

After a political rift and charges that he was a Socialist, Stelzle left the church in 1913. The Presbytery of New York City assumed control of Labor Temple until 1957 when the Board of National Missions of the Presbyterian Church closed it despite objections of many supporters.