St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery Church

Description

Saint Mark's represents the second oldest church building in Manhattan. The church stands on land originally home to the Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant's private chapel, but was sold to church at the price of one dollar by Stuyvesant's great-grandson. The church's Greek Revival tower was added in 1828 to give prominence to the building, then surrounded by a one of New York's most developing affluent residential neighborhoods.

Renovation, 1854

Constructed, 1799

Restored, 1975

Renovation, 1826

Designations

New York City Exterior Landmark

National Register of Historic Places

Related People & Organizations

Peter Stuyvesant,Peter Stuyvesant, resided on a farm before the England in 1664, located along the thoroughfare and Stuyvesant Street, which connected it to a family chapel on the present-day site of St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery. After his death in 1672, Stuyvesant was buried there in a vault, which was permanently sealed in 1953.According to the book Haunted Places: The National Directory, four ghosts live in the church, one of whom has a wooden leg and walks with a cane. Allegedly, this is Stuyvesant himself, whose right leg was replaced with a wooden peg after it was struck by a cannonball in 1644. According to Ghosts: True Encounters with the World Beyond, one woman said she felt "a man with a cane walking" in the center aisle of the church. He is occasionally seen and heard, too: church attendants have reported hearing the tapping of his peg leg. He also supposedly disrupted services in 1884 (by singing hymns in Dutch) and again in 1995 (by doing a vociferous inventory on bottles of rum), before disappearing into a wall. Any trip to the East Village, though, means risking bumping into the 17th-century politician, as he's generally known to wander the streets that surround the former site of his farm in centuries-old Dutch garb. Some even claim he's spending the afterlife in good company—with the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving and Harry Houdini, who also haunt the East Village. - NYC Tourism

Alexander Tunney Stewart,Alexander Turney Stewart, a wealthy merchant, buried in 1876 didn’t get immediate eternal rest due to his body being stolen from St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery Church and ransomed in 1878.

Related Sites

1st successful Colt Revolver demonstrated at Castle Garden-John C. Colt (of Colt revolver fame), a convicted murderer, committed suicide in jail and was buried at St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery Church in 1842.

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