French Church of Saint Esprit Graveyard

The French Church of Saint Esprit in 1807, located near the northeast corner of Nassau and Pine streets. The graveyard can be seen at the rear of the church, extending to Cedar Street (Bridges 1807)

Founded in 1688 to serve French-speaking Protestants of New Amsterdam, the congregation of the French Church of Saint Esprit had their church near the northeast corner of Nassau and Pine streets from 1704 to 1831.  Their burial ground was to the rear of the church, extending north to Cedar Street.  An 1830 article in the New-York Mirror described the church and graveyard:

This antiquated building, which is the oldest religious edifice now in the city, was erected in 1704 by the Huguenots, or French protestants . . . It is built in the plainest style, being constructed of stone, and plastered on the outside, with a very steep roof, and monastic looking tower . . . The building, which is 70 feet in length and 50 in breadth, has a southwest aspect, fronting on Pine street, just below Nassau street, and the tower is in the rear towards Cedar street, where a few moulding tombstones are still to be seen in the cemetery, behind the law buildings. (New-York Mirror July 17, 1830)

This 1905 engraving from Samuel Hollyer’s series of Old New York scenes depicts an 18th century view of the French Church and graveyard (NYPL)

In February of 1831, the congregation sold the church building and property and moved to a new building at Church and Franklin Streets. The graves in the churchyard were removed, and the congregation had remains of those that had not been claimed by their families reinterred in a vault that they had purchased at the cemetery of St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery. The property at Pine and Nassau streets was subsequently developed for business purposes, as Gabriel P. Disosway described in 1865:

L’Eglise du Saint Esprit, the French Protesant Church in Pine street, opposite the custom-house, was founded in the year 1704 . . . In our day it has been demolished, its dead removed, and the venerable sacred place, like many others in our busy city, is now devoted to mammon. Lawyers’ offices, custom-house brokers, a restaurant and lager-bier saloon, occupy the once hallowed spot.

A high-rise building now occupies the site.  The congregation of the French Church of Saint Esprit worships today in uptown Manhattan.

Sources: Bridges’ 1807 Plan of the city of New-York; The Earliest Churches of New York and Its Vicinity (Disoway 1865), 121; The Huguenot Church of New York: A History of the French Church of Saint Esprit (John A.F. Maynard 1938) 231, 256.