St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery

People have worshipped on the site of Peter Stuyvesant’s chapel since the 1600s, and the governor himself lies in the vault

Local name: St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery

Collection: Greenwich Village and the East Village · USA · Open in OpenStreetMap

The 1828 steeple and the cast-iron portico · Jim.henderson, CC0, Wikimedia Commons

The story

Before you is St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery. In 1651 this land was bought by Peter Stuyvesant, the director-general of the Dutch colony of New Netherland. His farm was here, a “bouwerij” in Dutch. That is where the word Bowery in the church’s name comes from. By 1660 Stuyvesant had built a family chapel on the farm. When he died, he was buried in a vault beneath it. The church still faces due south, at an angle to the street grid. It stood on a country lane long before the city blocks reached it. In 1793 Stuyvesant’s descendants sold the chapel to the Episcopal Church for one dollar. In 1795 the cornerstone of the present fieldstone church was laid. Its builder was John McComb Jr., who also built New York’s City Hall. The church was consecrated on the ninth of May 1799. It is the second-oldest church building in Manhattan, and people have worshipped on this site longer than anywhere else in the city. The steeple was added in 1828 and the cast-iron portico later. In 1922 the rector, William Guthrie, declared that dance could serve faith. Under him, Martha Graham and Ruth St. Denis danced in the sanctuary. In 1964 Sam Shepard’s first plays were staged here, and since 1966 the Poetry Project has been at home here. In the summer of 1978 the church nearly burned down. Part of the roof fell in, and nine of its twenty-three stained-glass windows were lost. It was rebuilt, with help from young people from the surrounding blocks. The bust of Stuyvesant was given to the church in 1915 by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and the Dutch government.

Visiting

131 East 10th Street, at Second Avenue. It is an active Episcopal church that also hosts poetry readings and dance performances. Services and events are listed on stmarksbowery.org. Subway: the 6 train to Astor Place, then about a seven-minute walk.