Ass'n for the Benefit of Colored Orphans v. Mayor

• Decision Date: 01 March 1887
• Citation: 104 N.Y. 581,12 N.E. 279
• Parties: ASSOCIATION FOR THE BENEFIT OF COLORED ORPHANS v. MAYOR, ETC., OF NEW YORK.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

104 N.Y. 581

12 N.E. 279

ASSOCIATION FOR THE BENEFIT OF COLORED ORPHANS

v.MAYOR, ETC., OF NEW YORK.¹

Court of Appeals of New York.

March 1, 1887.

Cross-appeals from general term supreme court, First department.

Herbert A. Shipman, for plaintiff.

Arthur H. Masten, for defendant.

PECKHAM, J.

The plaintiff commenced this action to set aside, as a cloud upon its title, the lien of certain taxes which the taxing officers of defendant had assumed to levy upon its lands situated in that city, and exclusively used by it for the purposes of its incorporation. The taxes were levied from the years 1877 to 1880, both inclusive, and amounted to something over $2,000. The special term granted judgment in favor of the plaintiff, and enjoined the collection of the tax for any one of the years mentioned. Upon appeal to the general term that court affirmed the judgment as to all the years but 1877, and held that the plaintiff purchased its land in that year subject to the lien of the tax, and therefore modified the judgment of the special term as to that year. Both parties appealed from that order, and the whole question is now before this court for review. The plaintiff claims that its property is exempt from taxation by virtue of the general laws of the state. The court below placed its decision on two grounds- First, that the facts showed that the building in question upon the property of the plaintiffwas a school-house; and, second, that it was a building for public worship.

The plaintiff was incorporated as a colored orphan asylum by chapter 232 of the Laws of 1838. Its charter was subsequently amended, but not in any matter material to this investigation. The act of incorporation did not specify the purpose for which the corporation was formed, any further than such purpose might be assumed from the name, but it did make the corporation subject to the provisions of, and it gave to it the powers possessed by, a corporation under the Revised Statutes, (1 Rev. St. 600, § 1;) and the sixth subdivision of that section gave the corporation power to make by-laws for the regulation of its affairs. There was put in evidence on the trial a copy of the constitution of the plaintiff, made pursuant to this power to make by-laws, and by article 2 it was declared that ‘the object of this society shall be to provide and maintain a place of refuge for colored orphans where they shall be boarded and suitably educated until of an age to be bound or apprenticed. In admitting children to the asylum, those deprived of both parents shall have the preference; but, if means be afforded, half orphans shall be received.’

Judging from its act of incorporation and the provisions of its constitution, we are by no means satisfied that it comes under either head of exemption as stated by the court below. This court has decided that the ‘school-house’ referred to in our statute of exemption (1 Rev. St. 388, § 4, subd. 3) is the public common school. Chegaray v. Mayor, etc., 13 N. Y. 220; the dictum of RUGGLES, C. J., to the contrary, in Chegary v. Jenkins, 5 N. Y. 376, being overruled by the court.

It is difficult to see, also, how this can be said to be a building for public worship within the same statute. The house rules provide that the Sabbath religious services shall be held in the assembly room at 11 A.M., and appropriate services on Thanksgiving and national fasts at such hour as the superintendent may designate. But it is also expressly provided that ‘no visitors are to be admitted on that day, [Sunday,] either to the children or other inmates, except under pressing and peculiar circumstances; and by consent of the superintendent or matron.’ How can that worship be called public to which the public is not admitted? On the contrary, it is obviously conducted as a proper religious service for the inmates of the institution only, and who are by statute made the wards of the trustees, who are thereby constituted their guardians. Again by the act, Laws 1852, c. 282, repeated substantially in section 827 of chapter 410 of the Laws of 1882, (New York consolidation act,) the building for public worship, to be exempt, must, in New York city at least, be exclusively used for that purpose, and also be the property of a religious society. It is not pretended that it is thus exclusively used.

Nor can it be successfully contended that the plaintiff is brought within the meaning of the statute as being either ‘an incorporated academy or other seminary of learning,’ by the very limited provision that is made for suitably educating these orphan children until they are of an age to be bound out or apprenticed. At any rate, the building is not exclusively used for the purpose of a seminary of learning, nor is that its prime or chief purpose. Protection and care, a place of refuge for colored orphans, are the main purposes, and the comparatively small amount of education comes in as an addendum to such charity.

The case of Hebrew Free School Ass'n v. Mayor, etc., 4 Hun, 446, is not in point. In that case there was and could be no question but that the corporation was a seminary of learning within the general exemption statute, and the only issue raised was whether the building was the exclusive property of a religious society. The object of the corporation was to provide for the gratuitous instruction of Jewish youth in the Hebrew religion and language and other branches of knowledge, and promote the study of Hebrew literature. The court held it answered sufficiently the designation of a religious society, within the meaning of the act of 1852, to entitle its building to exemption. But in this case the plaintiff is not brought within the general statute of exemption upon any of the grounds already discussed.

We think, however, its claim can very fairly rest upon another subdivision of the same statute. By subdivision 4 of section 4, already cited, as amended by chapter 136 of the Laws of 1866, it is provided that ‘every poor-house, almshouse, house of industry, and every house belonging to a company incorporated for the reformation of offenders, or to improve the moral condtion of seamen, and the real and personal property used for such purposes belonging to or connected with the same,’ shall be exempt from taxation. At first it might be thought (and it has been claimed) that this statute refers to such almshouses as are the property of the public, and are used and controlled by public authorities as the receptacles of public paupers in accordance with the general system of the poor laws of our state. This kind of claim was made, in the Case of Swiss Benevolent Soc., in the precise language above used; and in that case, reported in the Daily Register, September 12, 1885, the New York general term held that the argument was not sound, and for reasons which we think are entirely valid.

In the first place, it may be observed that there is no occasion for so narrow a construction of the statute arising from the language used. The statute in terms includes property other than such as is owned by the public, as it includes any corporation incorporated for the reformation of offenders, or to improve the moral condition of seamen, both of which may be private corporations; and so, too, an almshouse may be a private corporation. The building of the plaintiff comes within the fair meaning of an almshouse, which is defined as a house appropriated for the poor. This, certainly, is the case with the building of the plaintiff. It is appropriated wholly for the poor, who are colored orphans, and where they are to have a place of refuge, and to be boarded, clothed,...