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The Interchurch Center is a 19-story limestone-clad office building located at 475 Riverside Drive and West 120th Street in Manhattan, New York City. It is the headquarters for the international humanitarian ministry Church World Service, and also houses a wide variety of church agencies and ecumenical and interfaith organizations as well as some nonprofit foundations and faith-related organizations. The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. also occupied the building from its inception, but in February 2013, the NCCC consolidated its offices on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, and vacated its New York headquarters facilities.〔Michael Grybowski, "(National Council of Churches to Shut Down 'God Box' Office )" ''Christian Post'', February 14, 2013〕 NCCC's sister agency, Church World Service, remains a tenant in the building. Its concentration of religious organizations has led some to nickname the building the ''God Box''.〔Andrew Dolkart. Morningside Heights, Columbia University Press, New York, 1998, p. 326〕 Samuel G. Freedman describes the building as ''the closest thing to a Vatican for America’s mainline Protestant denominations.'' The mainline churches include the Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Reformed Church in America, Methodist and United Church of Christ (Congregationalists) denominations. But across the years many of them moved their headquarters closer to the majority of their constituents, leaving only certain divisions or offices in the New York facilities. 〔(The American Spectator : End of the Mainline ). Spectator.org. Retrieved on 2013-09-07.〕 The Center benefits from a strong religious and educational environment. One of its tenants is the New York Theological Seminary. The building is located across from The Riverside Church, Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University and is a short walk to Jewish Theological Seminary, Manhattan School of Music, the Korean Methodist Church and Institute, and the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine, all in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan's Upper West Side. It is convenient to public rail transportation via subway line #1 at 116th Street, the M60 bus line from LaGuardia Airport, and north-south bus routes M5 on Riverside Drive and M4 and M104 on Broadway. ==History== The Center was built in 1958 with gifts by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and other donors, together with a consortium of religious denominations, with the objective of encouraging cooperative work among such diverse religious groups as the Orthodox, African-American, and mainstream Protestant denominations and to foster the growth of ecumenical bodies such as the National Council of Churches. A condition of the Rockefeller gift was that the exterior of the structure had to be clad in the same color limestone as Riverside Church, across 120th Street, the Rockefeller's church home at the time. In the presence of a crowd of more than 30,000 gathered at the building site,〔(History ). The Interchurch Center. Retrieved on 2013-09-07.〕 the Center's cornerstone was laid by then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, and Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Arthur S. Flemming, were active in the work of the National Council of Churches. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Interchurch Center」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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