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St Paul's Chapel

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• Address: 209 Broadway
• Vicinity: Between Fulton and Vesey Sts
• Neighborhood of Financial District, NYC in Manhattan NYC
• Nabe of Wall Street in Financial District, NYC
• Borough of Manhattan NYC in New York City

• Travel Genus: Sight
• Sight Category: Building

• As Noted In: National Register of Historic Places, US National Park Service
• As Noted In: US National Historic Landmark, US National Park Service

The site of St Paul's Chapel was quite in the outskirts of the city. The same year in which the foundation stone was laid, the lot on which it stands had been ploughed up and sowed with wheat. When the building was finished, by the completion of the steeple in 1794, it was considered the most elegant and imposing church edifice in the city. The church lot extended in a beautiful lawn to the river, which at that time came up as far as Greenwich Street, and seen from the water, which it was intended to front, St. Paul's surrounded by stately trees and a spacious churchyard, must have been very attractive to the eye. So stood the new Church, beyond the City limits away off in the fields, surrounded by groves and orchards, and hard by the broad, bright river; an object of surprise to the good burghers, who scrupled not to comment with just severity on the folly of that visionary set of men, the Vestry of Trinity Church, who had put so large and ornate a building in a place so remote and sequestered, so difficult of access, and to which the population could never extend! — Wilburforce's History of the American Church, in One Hundred and Fifty Years of St Paul's Chapel, 1916