On a sunny Sunday, I decided to check out Trinity Churchyard and Broadway. I hadn’t spent any length of time there in a decade. Over the years I’ve been in, and conducted more tours in, Uptown Trinity Cemetery in Washington Heights, and my visits to the original flavor downtown have been relatively few. At Macy’s (2000-2004), we also had to work Saturdays during the holiday season and I recall one bleak December day when I took the train downtown and stalked around the churchyard on my lunch hour. I think overcast skies and few people around is the best time to see Trinity Churchyard.
Probably for security reasons, the old stones are more strictly guarded than in the past, with chain links lining the pathways; you can’t go on the grass anymore, making it tough to photograph inscriptions on stones that are angled away from the paths. I suppose there was an uptick in vandalism.
The first mention of Trinity Churchyard as a burial ground was in 1673, over 20 years before the first Trinity Church was built from 1696-1697 when a small group of Anglicans living in Manhattan petitioned Governor Benjamin Fletcher for approval to purchase land for a new church. Approval was granted and the petitioners purchased land for the new church from the Lutheran Congregation in Manhattan.
That first church was burned down during a 1776 fire begun by invading British forces. The second church was built between 1788-1790, surviving another great fire in 1835, but was found inadequate for the needs of a growing body of worshippers, and so the third church, the neo-Gothic structure designed by Richard Upjohn, was consecrated in 1846. For many years, it was the tallest building in the city. The adjoining memorial chapel built from 1912-1913. Until the Revolutionary War there were about 160,000 in the Trinity Cemetery churchyard. However, during the fires many tombstones were destroyed and others rendered unreadable.
Richard Churcher (1676-1681), the stone on the left in the first photo, died 16 years before Trinity Churchyard was incorporated. He’s buried in what became the north churchyard. There are many icons that symbolize the shortness of life on his gravestone: a skull and crossbones, a winged hourglass, an imitation of a 17th-century English bedstead carved at the top of the stone. His grave is the oldest surviving in Trinity Churchyard. A relative, Anne Churcher (above), was buried next to him in 1691; she died at 17.
“Sacred to the Memory of Adam Allyn, Comedian. Who Departed this Life February 16, 1768. This Stone Was Erected by the American Company as a Testimony of their unfeignd regard. He Posesed many good Qualitys. But as he was a Man He had the frailties Common to Mans Nature.” Everybody’s a critic, even the stonemason.
Adam Allyn arrived in NYC with his wife in 1758. He made his American debut in Philadelphia’s South Street Theatre on July 20, 1759 in The Recruiting Officer. He also played in NYC, making his first appearance at the Beekman Street Theatre in November 1761. The American Company, organized in 1758 by David Douglass, is considered the first American professional theater company. On February 15th 1768, the day of Mr. Allyn’s death, he was advertised to appear at six p.m. as Old Philpott in a farce entitled The Citizen.
You can see by the photo that the best time to visit Trinity is on an overcast day in the winter, when shadows of fully leaved trees don’t play havoc with reading the inscriptions.
Sidney Breese (1709-1767) was Master of the Port of New York and subsequently took up mercantile pursuits and was called “a popular and hospitable man and a merchant of integrity.” The inscription is unusual: “Made by himself/Ha Sidney Sidney/Lyest thou here/I here lye.” On many of these stones you see the “long s” that was popular in orthography in the 1700s.
Caroline “Lina” Webster Schermerhorn Astor (1830-1908), a prominent member of the Astor family and matriarch of the male line of American Astors, set herself up as an arbiter of “who’s who” as “nouveau riche” personalities entered society in the post-industrial revolution America. Mrs. Astor felt that the people who became rich from railroads and newly mechanized industries didn’t have the social standing of the older, more established families.
“Assisted by social arbiter Ward McAllister, she started in the winter season of 1872-73 to build up her list of socially prominent New Yorkers, therefore designating twenty-five patriarchs, who would define society, by inviting to each ball of the season, four ladies and five gentlemen. In addition to the thereby convened 250 people, an undefined number of visiting guests, prominent people from other cities, and debutantes would be invited directly by Mrs. Astor.
The Patriarch Balls held at Mrs. Astor’s mansions would go on until 1897, whereas Ward McAllister would organize them only until 1892. Of the last of these balls, held in the winter season 1891-92, Ward McAllister gave a list to the New York Times. For the first time after many years of guessing, the public was shown the official list of Mrs. Astor’s Four Hundred and thereby the names of society’s sacred inner circle.”
Mrs. Astor was buried in Uptown Trinity with the rest of the Astor family, including patriarch John Jacob. However, in 1914, this prominent tower in Trinity Churchyard was installed in her memory.
The Trinity Parish Yearbook of 1912 explains the symbolism of the Astor Cross: “It is especially appropriate and significant that so striking a witness to the religion of Our Lord should be lifted up beside the Mother Church and in the midst of the dense crowds and the great business interests gathered in the lower part of the city… The design has been prepared by Mr. Thomas Nash. The idea embodied in it is the genealogy of Our Lord according to St. Luke, as indicated by the figures of Adam and Eve, and then working around the upwards the figures are as follows: Seth, Enoch, Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Ruth, Jesse and David, the whole structure culminating in the Crucifix, the Figure upon it being that of the Ruling Christ. The figure of the Blessed Virgin bearing Our Lord as an infant in her arms is placed on the back of the Cross. On the base of the monument will be the text from the First Corinthians, ‘The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.’”
Alexander Hamilton was born in Charlestown, Nevis and arrived in New York at about 18 (his date of birth is uncertain; it’s either 1755 or 1757) to attend King’s College, now Columbia University, after clerking at several firms and attending the school that later became Princeton University. He was quickly swept up by the fervor for independence that was gathering steam in the colonies, and served with distinction in the revolutionary army, eventually becoming the chief of staff of George Washington and the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He’d go on to co-write the Federalist Papers that promoted the ratification of the Constitution, and then became the USA’s first Secretary of the Treasury; he founded the Bank of New York, the nation’s first national mint, and in a foray into publishing, the New-York Evening Post, still published today as The New York Post. Hamilton never lost his attachment to New York City and in 1802 built the first house he had ever owned in upper Manhattan, in what was then completely rural land, on a hilly 32-acre plot on what would become W. 143rd St. west of Convent Ave.
Over the years Hamilton had rebuffed requests for duels from those he opposed politically or thought themselves wronged, but when he assisted Aaron Burr’s victorious opponent in the NY State gubernatorial election in 1804, Burr, then the sitting Vice President, challenged Hamilton and was acceded. The duel took place on the morning of 7/11/1804 in Weehawken, NJ. Hamilton fired first and missed; it’s unclear whether he meant to miss or not. Burr didn’t miss and hit Hamilton in the abdomen. Hamilton was rowed back across the Hudson where he died of his wound at a friend’s place in Greenwich Village. Burr’s name is in general disgrace, though he’s thought to be misunderstood by some historians. Hamilton is buried here, in downtown Trinity Cemetery.
Here’s the grave of the most famous steamboater in history. While not the inventor of the steamboat, Robert Fulton (1765-1815) was instrumental in constructing a steamboat named the “Clermont” and parlaying it into a commercial success with the first permanent commercial route in history on the Hudson River.
Fulton was originally a landscape painter (the inventor of the telegraph, Samuel Morse, was a historical portrait painter). In partnership with Robert Livingston, he designed and constructed a steamboat, his ultimate venture, named “The North River Steamboat, later called the “Clermont.” The craft left New York City, proceeding up the Hudson River to Albany in only 32 hours.
At 49, at the height of his fame and while working on various projects, a serious cold developed into pneumonia, bringing about his death at his residence located in what is now Battery Place in lower Manhattan. His body lay in state there until a procession was formed conveying him to Trinity Church, the site of his funeral. Thousands lined the route as minute-guns were fired from a steam-frigate anchored off shore in the Hudson River and the New York Battery. His service was attended by representatives from both the national and state governments as well as high officials of the City of New York. Interment followed with placement beside his wife (nee Harriet Livingston) in her family vault at Trinity Churchyard Cemetery.
The vault became weatherbeaten and Robert Fulton’s name was never added to the list of the persons occupying the chamber and his resting place became hardly known. On the top of the vault was a brownstone slab, the inscriptions virtually obliterated. In 1901, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers sought to rectify this by the placement of a cenotaph marker, a short distance from the burial vault, a column bearing on one side a bronze medallion portrait.
The Lawrences were a prominent family in the early days of Queens, and produced some historically significant figures: for example, it was Captain James Lawrence (1781-1813) who said “Don’t give up the ship!” while commanding the USS Chesapeake vs. HMS Shannon during the War of 1812. The Chesapeake was defeated; Captain Lawrence was killed; the war ended in stalemate. There are two extant Lawrence family cemeteries in Queens, in Astoria and Bayside. In Trinity, Captain Lawrence’s grave is in a prominent place by the Broadway entrance.
After leaving Trinity Churchyard, I headed up Broadway, but detoured to see the atrium at #60 Wall, a public space I never knew existed since I rarely enter buildings that aren’t specifically marked for public egress. The truth is, I’m usually thrown out or greeted with “Can I help you sir?” The 60 Wall public space has been here since the 1980s, and is thought by architecture buffs to be a living fossil of 1980s design, as it was mostly unchanged since it was built. I thought the climate-controlled World Financial Center downtown was the lone space outside the New York Botanical Garden that you could see living palm trees in NYC, but they can also be found here. Until recently, Deutsche Bank called #60 Wall its HQ, but it moved to midtown, leaving the building mostly untenanted. In early 2024, though, the atrium was closed and is under redevelopment.
One of Manhattan’s most unique monuments gets stepped on thousands of times daily. William Barthman first set up a jewelry shop in the Financial District in 1884, and added a sidewalk clock on the corner of Broadway and Maiden Lane in 1899. The clock was designed by Barthman and an employee, Frank Homm. When Homm died in 1917, no one knew how to maintain its design, and the clock was replaced with a more customary model in 1925.
The Barthman Clock keeps on ticking with the help of an electric motor. An organization known as the Maiden Lane Historical Society set up a plaque in 1928 at Barthman’s depicting what Broadway and Maiden Lane looked like that year. In 1946, the NYPD estimated that 51,000 people stepped on the clock every day.
After moving up Broadway a few years ago, the jeweler now has an address in Brooklyn. But it made an arrangement with the current building to maintain the Barthman Clock, even though the unusual timepiece doesn’t have Landmarks Preservation Commission protection.
—Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013)