CBS 30th Street Studio, also known as Columbia 30th Street Studio, and nicknamed "The Church", was an American recording studio operated by Columbia Records from 1948 to 1981 located at 207 East 30th Street, between Second and Third Avenues in Manhattan, New York City. Actually containing two Columbia sound rooms — “Studio C” and “Studio D” — the facility was considered by some in the music industry to offer the best-sounding recording venue of its time, while others considered it to have been the greatest recording studio in history. Numerous recordings were made there in all genres, including Ray Conniff's 'S Wonderful (1956), Miles Davis' Kind of Blue (1959) and In A Silent Way (1969), Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (Original Broadway Cast recording, 1957), Percy Faith's Theme from A Summer Place (1959), Chicago's Chicago Transit Authority (1969), Chicago (1970), and Chicago III (1971), Pink Floyd's The Wall (1979), as well as a recording about the city itself, Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York". Early building and church history The site was originally the Adams-Parkhurst Memorial Presbyterian Church, a mission of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, designed by the architect J. Cleaveland Cady, and was dedicated March 28, 1875. Several groups shared the building over the years, including a German Lutheran congregation, an Armenian Evangelical Church (1896–1921), and radio station WLIB (1944–1952). Recording studio Having been a church for many years, it had been abandoned and empty for some time, and in 1948 it was transformed into a recording studio by Columbia Records. "There was one big room, and no other place in which to record", wrote John Marks in an article in Stereophile magazine in 2002. The recording studio was approximately 97 feet long by 55 feet wide, with a 50-foot-high ceiling. The original control room (8 by 14 feet in size) was on the second floor. Later, the control room was moved down to the ground floor. "It was huge and the room sound was incredible," recalls Jim Reeves, a sound technician who had worked in it. "I was inspired," he continues, "by the fact that, aside from the artistry, how clean the audio system was." A CBS Records A&R executive hailed the former church's unique and varied sound qualities, writing that the studio "resounds with the glory of a symphony orchestra, sparkles with the clarity of a polished piano performance, embraces the exuberance of a Broadway cast