Second Avenue at Tenth Street: the fieldstone church of 1799 under its 1828 steeple, the cast iron portico, the lions, the flat gravestones of the old Stuyvesant farm, then the plain white sanctuary set with folding chairs for the Poetry Project.
Peter Stuyvesant built a chapel on his bouwerij farm in 1660 and was buried beneath it. The present fieldstone church at 131 East 10th Street, designed by John McComb Jr., was consecrated on May 9, 1799, and its steeple was added in 1828. The Poetry Project was founded here in 1966 and Danspace Project has been housed here since 1974. A three alarm fire on July 12, 1978 destroyed nine of 23 stained glass windows and part of the roof, and rebuilding took five years.
Source · St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery ↗
The fieldstone body of 1799, the 1828 steeple by Thompson and Town, the cast iron portico of 1856, Borglum's Aspiration and Inspiration, the lions of St. Mark, the flat vault markers, the Stuyvesant vault under the east wall and the Dupuis bust, the Edelman windows, the white sanctuary with folding chairs and a lectern. Mood: east village, a reading at eight. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.