St Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery, Manhattan

St Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery is an Episcopal church in the East Village, Manhattan, New York City. Built in 1799, it is already quite an old church. Yet it stands on the ground of an even older place of Christian worship.

There has been a church standing on the site of St Mark's Church as early as 1660. It belonged to Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam (as New York was called in its founding days). Peter Stuyvesant, or to be more accurate, Petrus Stuyvesant (he was never known as Peter in historical documents), is credited as one of those who established New York.

St Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery, New York City, in winter
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:East_Village_St_Mark.jpg
Author: Urban


Stuyvesant bought the land in 1651 to use as a bowery - a sort of farm among the Dutch settlers. He built a family chapel there in 1660. Stuyvesant passed away in 1678, and was interred in the vault of the chapel.

In 1793, the great-grandson of Peter Stuyvesant, also named Petrus, donated the chapel to the Episcopal Church, and stipulated that a new church be built on the ground. That new church was to become the St Mark's Church.

St Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery has a cemetery which is the final resting place of many famous New Yorkers including Alexander Turney Stewart, a wealthy merchant whose concepts of retail and distribution were useful to stores such as Sears, K-Mart and Wal-Mart.

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