ORANGE Street near Hicks Street in Brooklyn Heights is dominated by the 1849 Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims, where Henry Ward Beecher preached from the church’s opening until 1887. Beecher, a lecturer and writer as well as a pastor, attained a pre-eminence almost equal to Abraham Lincoln’s at the height of the Civil War, and even endorsed products, which well-known ministers did in the era. The pastor staged mock slave auctions to call attention to the evils of slavery; his sister, Harriet, wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
Beecher is commemorated by not one but two statues in Brooklyn Heights: one in Cadman Plaza that used to be closer to City (now Borough) Hall, and his one by sculptor Gutzon Borglum of Mount Rushmore fame, in the garden court next to Plymouth Church, showing the preacher with Pinky, the most famous of his ‘auctioned slaves.’ The church has been renovated in recent years and is worth a visit for services on Sundays.
Abraham Lincoln, depicted in bronze on the church wall, worshipped here twice. His pew is marked by a silver plaque. Charles Dickens spoke here in 1867 during his second visit to the USA, and Horace Greeley, Mark Twain and Booker T. Washington attended services here.
Beecher was later involved in a sex scandal and was accused of committing adultery with the wife of a trusted associate. It caused irreparable damage to his career, though a jury found him not guilty of the crime. He is interred in Green-Wood Cemetery.
In the tradition of the New England Congregational Church, the exterior is virtually without ornamentation.
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He raised money to send guns to abolitionist groups before the Civil War, and they were called Beecher’s Bibles.