Baptist Church; he became a major financial backer of the church in the 1870s. William and his brother John D. Rockefeller later became trustees of the church and many of its services were held at the Rockefellers' home nearby. Cornelius Woelfkin, who became the church's minister in 1912, started leading the church in a more modernist direction. By the early 20th century, Fifth Avenue was experiencing increased commercial development and the church building became dilapidated. The congregation sold its old headquarters in 1919 and bought land at Park Avenue and 63rd Street the following year. John Rockefeller's son John D. Rockefeller Jr. funded half of the projected $1 million cost. The new church, which was dubbed the "Little Cathedral", was designed by Henry C. Pelton in partnership with Francis R. Allen and Charles Collens. The final service in the Fifth Avenue location was held on April 3, 1922, and the renamed Park Avenue Baptist Church held its first class in the new location the next week. Progressive ideology In 1924, John D. Rockefeller Jr. donated $500,000 to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights, which was further uptown from the Park Avenue location, in an unsuccessful attempt to influence the cathedral's ideology in a progressive direction. The following January, Harry E. Edmonds—leader of the International House in Morningside Heights for whose construction Rockefeller had provided funds—wrote to Rockefeller to propose creating a new church in the neighborhood. Edmonds suggested progressive pastor Harry Emerson Fosdick should head such a church. Rockefeller then told the Park Avenue Baptist Church's leaders about the plan and hired an agent to inspect the planned church site. Woelfkin quit in mid-May 1925 and Rockefeller Jr. immediately started looking for a new minister, ultimately deciding on Fosdick, who had declined Rockefeller's offers several times, saying he did not "want to be known as the pastor of the richest man in the country". Fosdick stated he would accept the minister position on the conditions that the church would move to Morningside Heights, follow a policy of religious liberalism, remove the requirement for members to be baptized, and become nondenominational. At the end of May 1925, Fosdick agreed to become minister of the Park Avenue Baptist Church. Only fifteen percent of congregants voted against Fosdick's appointment. Under Fosdick's leadership, the congregation doubled in size by 1930. The new members were diverse; of the 158 people who