St. Mark’s Church has stood at Second Avenue and 10th Street since 1799. Before that, in 1660, a much smaller family chapel was put up by Peter Stuyvesant, governor of New Amsterdam who owned the farm—or “Bouwerie”—on that site.
This 1853 illustration, from Valentine’s City of New York Guide Book, shows the current church building with its Greek Revival steeple, just before a portico was added in 1854. Hmm, was the East Side still so bucolic back in the middle of the 19th century? This depiction seems like a bit of an exaggeration.
Here is St. Mark’s 80 years later, in 1936. The church looks kind of spooky and barren, the facade missing the stone and brick we’re used to seeing today.
St. Mark’s circa 2008, a lovely landmark open to the public and a reminder of New York’s Dutch colonial past. There are few other places in the city where can you walk along tombstones that mark the burial sites of prominent New York citizens of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Tags: Bouwerie, old New York churches, Peter Stuyvesant, St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery, Valentine's City of New York Guidebook
Ephemeral New York 
November 20, 2008 at 4:35 am |
[…] It’s even cooler to see a street name carved into an iron fence post, as it is here at St. Mark’s Church on Second Avenue and 10th Street. A little St. Mark’s history and additional images can be found here. […]
May 2, 2013 at 3:44 am |
[…] Called the Healing Garden, it’s on the west side of the church grounds, a secluded spot away from Second Avenue traffic and the tombs of 18th and 19th century prominent New Yorkers (including that of Peter Stuyvesant, whose farm the church was built on). […]
March 10, 2014 at 2:11 am |
[…] the northern end of the neighborhood is the cemetery ground at St. Mark’s Church, at Second Avenue and 11th […]
August 24, 2015 at 6:15 am |
[…] the Ithiel Town Building—named after its architect, who also designed Federal Hall downtown and St. Mark’s Church on East 10th Street—still […]
April 11, 2016 at 8:48 am |
[…] And to give the block some pizzazz (and copy fashionable street names like Astor Place), he renamed it after nearby St. Marks Church. […]
June 4, 2018 at 6:22 am |
[…] died in 1672 and was interred at St. Mark’s Church at Second Avenue and 10th Street, which was on his […]
July 16, 2018 at 5:45 am |
[…] one regular haunt, however, was St. Mark’s Church at Tenth Street and Second Avenue, where eight generations of Stuyvesants had been buried in a […]
August 19, 2019 at 7:28 am |
[…] neighborhood surrounding St. Mark’s Church on Second Avenue and 10th Street owes its charm to the descendants of the Stuyvesant […]