St.-Marks-In-The-Bowery | |
Location | 131 E. 10th St. (at Second Ave.) Manhattan, New York City |
---|---|
Coordinates | 40°43′49″N73°59′14″W / 40.730376°N 73.987121°W |
Built | 1795; [1] 1799, restored 1975–1978, restored 1978–1984 [2] |
Architect | Ithiel Town, et al. Harold Edelman |
Architectural style | Georgian; [1] Federal body, Greek Revival steeple |
Website | stmarksbowery |
NRHP reference No. | 72000885 |
NYCL No. | 0229 |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | June 19, 1972 [1] |
Designated NYCL | April 19, 1966 |
St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery is a parish of the Episcopal Church at 131 East 10th Street (near Stuyvesant Street and Second Avenue) in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The property has been the site of continuous Christian worship since the mid-17th century, making it New York City's oldest site of continuous religious practice. The structure is the second-oldest church building in Manhattan. [3]
In 2020, it reported 103 members, average attendance of 67, and $142,197 in plate and pledge income.
In 1651, Petrus Stuyvesant, Director General of New Netherland, purchased land for a bowery or farm from the Dutch West India Company and by 1660 built a family chapel at the present day site of St. Mark's Church. Stuyvesant died in 1672 and was interred in a vault under the chapel. [4] [5]
Stuyvesant's great-grandson, Petrus "Peter" Stuyvesant, sold the chapel property to the Episcopal Church for $1 in 1793, [3] stipulating that a new chapel be erected to serve Bowery Village, the community which had coalesced around the Stuyvesant family chapel. [6] In 1795 the cornerstone of the present day St. Mark's Church was laid, and the fieldstone Georgian style church, built by the architect and mason John McComb Jr., was completed and consecrated on May 9, 1799. [4] Alexander Hamilton provided legal aid in incorporating St. Mark's Church as the first Episcopal parish independent of Trinity Church in New York City. By 1807 the church had as many as two hundred worshipers at its summer services, with 70 during the winter. [6]
In 1828, the church steeple, the design of which is attributed to Martin Euclid Thompson and Ithiel Town, in Greek Revival style, was erected. More changes came about beginning in 1835, when John C. Tucker's stone Parish Hall was constructed, [4] and the next year (1836) the church itself was renovated, with the original square pillars being replaced with thinner ones in Egyptian Revival style. In addition, the current cast- and wrought iron fence was added in 1838; these renovations are credited to Thompson. [4] [7] At around the same time, the two-story fieldstone Sunday School was completed, and the church established the Parish Infant School for poor children.
Later, in 1861, the church commissioned a brick addition to the Parish Hall, which was designed and supervised by architect James Renwick Jr., and the St. Mark's Hospital Association was organized by members of the congregation. Outside the church, the cast iron portico, was added around 1858; its design is attributed to James Bogardus, who was an early innovator in cast iron construction. [4]
At the start of the 20th century, leading architect Ernest Flagg designed the rectory. Overall, while the 19th century saw St. Mark's Church grow through its many construction projects, the 20th century was marked by community service and cultural expansion. [8]
In 1966, the Poetry Project and The Film Project, which later became the Millennium Film Workshop, were founded. Furthermore, in 1975, the Danspace Project was founded by Larry Fagin; the Community Documentation Workshop under the direction of Arthur Tobier was established; and the Preservation Youth Project expanded to a full-time work training program, which undertook the mission of the preserving St Mark's landmark exterior under the supervision of artisan teachers. [4] On July 27, 1978, a fire nearly destroyed the church. The Citizens to Save St Mark's was founded to raise funds for its reconstruction and the Preservation Youth Project undertook the reconstruction supervised by architect Harold Edelman and craftspeople provided by preservation contractor I. Maas & Sons. The Landmark Fund emerged from the Citizens to Save St Mark's and continues to exist to help maintain and preserve St. Mark's Church for future generations. The restoration was completed in 1986, with new stained-glass windows designed by Edelman. [2]
Rector William Guthrie was known to incorporate Native American, Hindu, Buddhist, and Bahá'í ceremonies and guest speakers into services. [8] [9] [10] [11]
Today, the rectory houses the Neighborhood Preservation Center, [12] the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and the Historic Districts Council, as well as other preservation and community organizations such as the Poetry Project, the Millennium Film Workshop, and the Danspace Project. [4]
Over the years, several Dutch dignitaries visited the church while they were in the United States. In 1952, Queen Juliana of the Netherlands visited the church and laid a wreath given by her mother, Queen Wilhelmina, at the bust of Petrus Stuyvesant, which had been given to the church by Wilhelmina and the Dutch government in 1915. [4] In 1981 and 1982, Princess Margriet and Queen Beatrix, both of the Netherlands, also visited. [13]
St Mark's has supported an active artistic community since the 19th century.
In 1919 poet Kahlil Gibran was appointed a member of the St. Mark's Arts Committee, and the next year, the two prominent Indian statues, "Aspiration" and "Inspiration" by sculptor Solon Borglum, which flank the church entry, were unveiled. Gibran also presented readings of his famous written works, [8] some of which became annual affairs for a while, [14] as well as an exhibition of his drawings. [15] Isadora Duncan danced in the church in 1922, and Martha Graham in 1930. In 1926, poet William Carlos Williams lectured at the St. Mark's Sunday Symposium, which over the years featured such artists as Amy Lowell, Edward Steichen, Houdini, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Ruth St. Denis and Carl Sandburg.
Starting in 1955, the Lower East Side artists' held an annual exhibition during the summer at St. Mark's. It was an inclusive, non-juried group exhibition that featured hundreds of artists from the neighborhood and utilized both the interior spaces and the yard.
Theatre Genesis was founded by director Ralph Cook in 1964 and, in the same year, Sam Shepard had his first two plays, Cowboys and Rock Garden produced at the church. In 1969, St. Mark's innovated a fusion of liturgy and experimental rock music, the Electric Liturgy given by the Mind Garage, which was the first work of its kind to be nationally televised.
St. Mark's hosts modern artistic endeavors, including the Poetry Project, [16] and Danspace Project, [17] which stage events throughout the year. A November 1971 Poetry Project reading by Patti Smith, accompanied by Lenny Kaye on guitar, launched their rock and roll careers and marked the founding of the Patti Smith Group. [18]
In addition, Richard Foreman's avant-garde Ontological-Hysteric Theater [19] was also housed there in its own space from 1992 until 2010. [20]
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Both the church's East and West Yards have under them stone burial vaults, in which many prominent New Yorkers were interred. Although it no longer does full body burials, the church still does cremation burials in the church vault under the West Yard. [4]
Peter Stuyvesant was a Dutch colonial administrator who served as the director-general of New Netherland from 1647 to 1664, when the colony was provisionally ceded to the Kingdom of England. He was a major figure in the history of New York City and his name has been given to various landmarks and points of interest throughout the city.
The East Village is a neighborhood on the East Side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is roughly defined as the area east of the Bowery and Third Avenue, between 14th Street on the north and Houston Street on the south. The East Village contains three subsections: Alphabet City, in reference to the single-letter-named avenues that are located to the east of First Avenue; Little Ukraine, near Second Avenue and 6th and 7th Streets; and the Bowery, located around the street of the same name.
The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) is the New York City agency charged with administering the city's Landmarks Preservation Law. The LPC is responsible for protecting New York City's architecturally, historically, and culturally significant buildings and sites by granting them landmark or historic district status, and regulating them after designation. It is the largest municipal preservation agency in the nation. As of July 1, 2020, the LPC has designated more than 37,800 landmark properties in all five boroughs. Most of these are concentrated in historic districts, although there are over a thousand individual landmarks, as well as numerous interior and scenic landmarks.
The Bowery is a street and neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City, United States. The street runs from Chatham Square at Park Row, Worth Street, and Mott Street in the south to Cooper Square at 4th Street in the north. The eponymous neighborhood runs roughly from the Bowery east to Allen Street and First Avenue, and from Canal Street north to Cooper Square/East Fourth Street. The neighborhood roughly overlaps with Little Australia. To the south is Chinatown, to the east are the Lower East Side and the East Village, and to the west are Little Italy and NoHo. It has historically been considered a part of the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Stuyvesant Street is one of the oldest streets in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It runs diagonally from 9th Street at Third Avenue to 10th Street near Second Avenue, all within the East Village, Manhattan, neighborhood. The majority of the street is included in the St. Mark's Historic District.
St. Paul's Chapel is a chapel building of Trinity Church, an episcopal parish, located at 209 Broadway, between Fulton Street and Vesey Street, in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Built in 1766, it is the oldest surviving church building in Manhattan and one of the nation's most well renowned examples of Late Georgian church architecture.
The Bouwerie Lane Theatre is a former bank building which became an Off-Broadway theatre, located at 330 Bowery at Bond Street in Manhattan, New York City. It is located in the NoHo Historic District. The cast-iron building, which was constructed from 1873-1874, was designed by Henry Engelbert in the Italianate style for the Atlantic Savings Bank, which became the Bond Street Saving Bank before the building was completed. When the bank failed in 1879, the building was sold to the German Exchange Bank, which served the German immigrant community. Prior to the 1960s, the building was used for the storage of fabrics.
Stuyvesant Square is the name of both a park and its surrounding neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The park is located between 15th Street, 17th Street, Rutherford Place, and Nathan D. Perlman Place. Second Avenue divides the park into two halves, east and west, and each half is surrounded by the original cast-iron fence.
Grand Street is a street in Lower Manhattan, New York City. It runs west/east parallel to and south of Delancey Street, from SoHo through Chinatown, Little Italy, the Bowery, and the Lower East Side. The street's western terminus is Varick Street, and on the east it ends at the service road for the FDR Drive.
St. George's Episcopal Church is a historic church located at 209 East 16th Street at Rutherford Place, on Stuyvesant Square in Manhattan, New York City. Called "one of the first and most significant examples of Early Romanesque Revival church architecture in America", the church exterior was designed by Charles Otto Blesch and the interior by Leopold Eidlitz. It is one of the two sanctuaries of the Calvary-St. George's Parish.
The Hamilton Fish House, also known as the Stuyvesant Fish House and Nicholas and Elizabeth Stuyvesant Fish House, is where Hamilton Fish (1808–93), later Governor and Senator of New York, was born and resided from 1808 to 1838. It is at 21 Stuyvesant Street, a diagonal street within the Manhattan street grid, between 9th and 10th Streets in the East Village neighborhood of New York City. It is owned by Cooper Union and used as a residence for the college's president.
St. Mark's Historic District is a historic district located in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. The district was designated a city landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1969, and it was extended in 1984 to include two more buildings on East 10th Street. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 and was expanded in 1985. The boundaries of the NRHP district and its expansion are now coterminous with those of the LPC.
St. Cecilia Church is a Roman Catholic parish church in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and a historic landmark located at 120 East 106th Street between Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue, Manhattan, New York City, New York. The parish was established in 1873. It was staffed by the Redemptorist Fathers from 1939 to 2007. The church was designated a New York City landmark in 1976. The church and convent were listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1984.
The Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew is a historic Episcopal church at 520 Clinton Avenue between Fulton Street and Atlantic Avenue in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City. This congregation was founded as St. Luke's Protestant Episcopal Church in 1842 following the failure of Trinity Church, which had been consecrated in the same building on June 1, 1835, by Bishop Onderdonk of the Diocese of Long Island. The founding of a church in this location resulted from the expansion of Brooklyn beyond initial European settlement in Brooklyn Heights. The building was constructed on a property consisting of eight city lots donated by George W. Pine.
The Flatbush Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, also known as the Flatbush Reformed Church, is a historic Dutch Reformed church – now a member of the Reformed Church in America – at 890 Flatbush Avenue in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City. The church complex consists of the church, cemetery, parsonage and church house.
The St. Nicholas of Myra Church is an American Carpatho-Rusyn Orthodox Diocese (ACROD) church dedicated to Saint Nicholas, located at 288 East 10th Street, on the corner of Avenue A in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, across from Tompkins Square Park.
Peter Gerard Stuyvesant was an American landowner, philanthropist and descendant of Peter Stuyvesant who was prominent in New York society in the 1600s.
Petrus "Peter" Stuyvesant was a New York landowner and merchant who was a great-grandson of his namesake, Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Director-General of New Amsterdam.
Stuyvesant Farm, also known as the Great Bowery, was the estate of Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch director-general of the colony of New Netherland, as well as his predecessors and later his familial descendants. The land was at first designated Bowery No. 1, the largest and northernmost of six initial estates of the Dutch West India Company north of New Amsterdam, used as the official residence and economic support for Willem Verhulst and all subsequent directors of the colony.
The St. George or The St. George Residence, now functioning under the name of Hotel 17 is a historic building located at 223–225 East 17th Street, on Stuyvesant Square in Manhattan, New York City. It was designated as part of the Stuyvesant Square Historic District, a New York City landmark district, in 1975.
St. Mark's-in-the-Bouwerie... last Easter, went A. Van Horne Stuyvesant, as the Stuyvesants have always gone, to assure themselves that the grave of their ancestor, Peter Stuyvesant, was in good keeping.