41st Street Reformed Presbyterian Church Cemetery

This detail from a modern map overlaid with an 1852 map of Manhattan shows the 41st Street Reformed Presbyterian Cemetery that existed in the mid-19th century and the Port Authority Bus Terminal ramps that cover the site today.

The Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan is the busiest bus station in the world, with a quarter of a million commuters and intercity passengers arriving or departing via 8,000 buses on a typical weekday. Located on Eighth Avenue between 40^th and 42^nd streets in Midtown, the terminal has a unique ramp system that provides a direct connection to the Lincoln Tunnel. These ramps are built over the site where the 41^st Street Reformed Presbyterian Church Cemetery once existed.

The Reformed Presbyterian Church Cemetery, approximately 125 feet wide and 100 feet deep, was located 100 feet west of Ninth Avenue on the south side of West 41^st Street. The property was acquired for use as a burial ground in 1832, by three elders of the Reformed Presbyterian Church. The Reformed Presbyterian Church is a small denomination that originated in Scotland in 1690 when its members refused to become part of the national Church of Scotland.

The Reformed Presbyterian Church Cemetery in 1854.

The first Reformed Presbyterian congregation in New York City was organized in 1797 and had a church on Chambers Street in downtown Manhattan; in 1830 members living further uptown incorporated as the Second Reformed Presbyterian congregation and acquired a church at 166 Waverly Street in Greenwich Village; in 1848, part of this congregation split to form the Third Reformed Presbyterian congregation. After the 1848 split, the Third congregation remained at the Waverly Street location while the Second congregation erected a church on 11^th Street near Sixth Avenue. Records show the 41^st Street cemetery was used by both the Second and Third Reformed Presbyterian congregations, which collectively had about 500 members.

An 1856 notice of the removal of the 41st Street Reformed Presbyterian Cemetery

No records have been found to tell us how many people were interred in the Reformed Presbyterian Cemetery on 41^st Street, or the names of those who were laid to rest there during the two-and-a-half decades it was utilized for burials. In October of 1856, church trustees removed the remains of those interred in the 41^st Street burial ground to Machpelah Cemetery in what is now North Bergen, New Jersey.

In 1858, the Trustees of the Second and Third Reformed Presbyterian congregations sold the cemetery property and it was redeveloped. In 1890, the location of the former cemetery was occupied by a rag warehouse and other structures. Construction of the Port Authority Bus Terminal began in the late 1940s. Today, the piers supporting the ramp system, and several buildings beneath the ramps, stand on the former site of the 41^st Street Reformed Presbyterian Cemetery.

A 2021 view of the ramps and other structures that cover the former site of the 41st Street Reformed Presbyterian Cemetery (Michael Young)

Sources: Dripps’ 1852 Map of the City of New-York extending northward to Fiftieth St; Perris’ 1854 Maps of the City of New York, Vol 7 Pl 97; “Special Notices,” New York Herald, Oct 10, 1856; “City Items—A Burying Ground Closed,” New York Daily Tribune, Oct 16, 1856; “City Intelligence—Removing the Dead,” New York Herald, Oct 17, 1856; History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in America (Glasgow 1888); Archaeological Documentary Study, No. 7 Line Extension/Hudson Yards Rezoning (Parsons Brinckerhoff et al 2004);  “Prepare for Death and Follow Me:”An Archaeological Survey of the Historic Period Cemeteries of New York City (Meade 2020); “A New Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York,” TR News 31 Nov-Dec 2017; “Port Authority Bus Terminal to Receive Multi-Billion-Dollar Overhaul in Midtown Manhattan,” New York YIMBY, Feb 1, 2021

Attorney Street Methodist Protestant Church Burial Vaults

Newspaper headline, Apr 4, 1880

Early on an April morning in 1880, inhabitants of the crowded tenement buildings near the corner of Attorney and Delancey streets on Manhattan’s Lower East Side were startled by a crashing sound and  trembling of the ground that was first thought to be an earthquake. Upon the commotion, a Mr. Baker, who lived in an apartment next to the Wesley Methodist Chapel on Attorney Street, looked out of his window and saw what used to be a churchyard behind the chapel had become a hole in the ground. The church sexton came running from his home across the street, declaring that he knew as soon as he heard the great noise that the old burial vaults in the churchyard had fallen in.

This snippet from an 1852 map shows the Attorney Street Methodist Protestant Church and the rear yard where the burial vaults were located

The church was built in 1831 by the society of the First Methodist Protestant Church, one of the earliest Methodist Protestant congregations in the country. Behind their brick church building, which faced Attorney Street, was a small square yard where they constructed two underground burial vaults for the reception of bodies; these were reportedly quickly filled during the local cholera epidemics of the 1830s and 1840s. The Attorney Street Methodist Protestant Church acquired land in Brooklyn for future burials—first in Williamsburg and later in Bushwick—and the burial vaults behind their church probably ceased to be used in the 1850s. In 1873, the Attorney Street congregation itself relocated to Brooklyn, becoming the Fourth Street Methodist Protestant congregation in Williamsburg. They sold their property on Attorney Street to the Methodist Church Extension Society, which reopened it as a mission chapel.

Very few people in the neighborhood knew that there were vaults behind the church at the time they collapsed in 1880. A former sexton, speaking to newspaper reporters, claimed nearly 5,000 bodies were interred in the vaults. When the roof collapsed, the vaults became a jagged pit 12 feet deep, 25 long, and 15 feet wide. At the sides of the fallen plot of earth, beneath the arched side walls, scores of coffins could be seen, of every shape and size, broken and in disorder. Parts of skeletons were also visible among the debris.

Rather than exhuming the remains from the vaults and relocating them to another cemetery, the church trustees hired workmen to repair the roof by building two brick walls to support the arch. Remains exposed during the collapse were covered with earth excavated for the foundations of these walls.

The synagogue at 87 Attorney Street, originally the Attorney Street Methodist Protestant Church, just before it was demolished in 1989 (VillagePreservation)

In the late 1890s, the old Methodist church building on Attorney Street became home to a Jewish congregation and continued to be used as a synagogue until the building was demolished in 1989. In 2000, an apartment building was built on the church site but the rear yard was left as open space.

Like their 1880s counterparts, it’s likely no one in the neighborhood today is aware that burial vaults—and the remains of several thousand 19th-century Lower East Siders—may still be present under the small rear yard at 87 Attorney Street.

An 1879 map shows the Attorney Street Methodist Church property and surrounding neighborhood about the time the burial vaults collapsed

A 2022 aerial view shows the apartment building on the site of the Attorney Street Methodist Protestant Church, and the rear yard where the underground burial vaults may still be present (GoogleEarth)

Sources: Dripps’ 1852 Map of the City of New-York extending northward to Fiftieth St; Bromley’s 1879 Atlas of the Entire City of New York, Pl 6; New York County Conveyances, Vol 265, p615-617, Vol 282 p534-536, “United States, New York Land Records, 1630-1975,” FamilySearch; Cyclopaedia of Methodism (Simpson 1880); Annals of New York Methodism (Seaman 1892); From Abyssianian to Zion: A Guide to Manhattan’s Houses of Worship (Dunlap 2004); “The Corner Stone of the Associated Methodist Church…” Commercial Advertiser, Oct 27 1830; “Notice,” New York Evangelist, Apr 2 1831; Doggett’s New-York City Directory for 1845 & 1846; “Burial Vaults Caving In,” The Sun, Apr 4 1880; “An Old Burial Vault Opened,” New York Tribune, Apr 4 1880; “An Old Burial-Vault Caves In,” New York Times, Apr 4, 1880; “City and Suburban News,” New York Times, Apr 6 1880; “Undermining the Church,” The Sun, Apr 14 1880; “A Synagogue’s Wall Collapses,” New York Times, Jan 29, 1989; Synagogue, 87 Attorney Street (Village Preservation)

Bedford Street Methodist Church Graveyard and Vaults

This vintage photo of Bedford and Morton streets in Greenwich Village shows part of the Bedford Street Methodist Church at the southeast corner, just before it was demolished in 1914 (NYPL)

The first Methodist congregation in Greenwich Village was founded in 1805 and in 1810 erected a meeting house at the southeast corner of Bedford and Morton streets. This structure—a frame building with shingled sides—was enlarged in 1830, then replaced in 1840 by a red-brick church. The Bedford Street Methodist church became one of the largest and most prosperous congregations in the city, its membership ranging in size from 800 to 1,200 for most of the 19^th century. Known as “a hot furnace of religious activity” for its evangelism, the Bedford Street Church congregation included the middle classes of old Greenwich Village as well as wealthy local families such as the McLeans, Brushes, DeGroots, Bakers, and Halls.

This detail from an 1854 map shows the Bedford Street Methodist Church at the southeast corner of Bedford and Morton streets in Greenwich Village. The empty lot next to the church along Morton Street is the former church grounds; by that time remains from the cemetery had been exhumed and removed to vaults beneath the church.

The original meeting house faced Bedford Street and behind it stretched a graveyard where approximately 3,000 bodies were buried until the new church was built in 1840. At that time, a system of burial vaults was constructed beneath the church and the cemetery plot along Morton Street was sold. Before the purchaser was allowed to take possession of the cemetery property, the ground was “carefully dug over by employees of the church, who gathered up every human relic and deposited it in the vaults,” according to one account. The vaults beneath the church continued to be used for new interments until about 1865.

Monument at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Queens marking the plot where remains exhumed from the Bedford Street Methodist Church graveyard and vaults were reburied (Chris Bendall)

The Bedford Street Methodist Church building stood over the bones of several thousand of the “best and truest people of Greenwich Village” until title to the church property passed to the city in 1913 for the southward extension of Seventh Avenue. Before the demolition of the building in January of 1914, remains from the burial vaults beneath the church were moved to a plot at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Queens. The homeless Bedford Street Methodist congregation merged with the Metropolitan Methodist Temple on Seventh Avenue and 13th Street, which was later renamed the Metropolitan-Duane Methodist Church.

Excavations for the Seventh Avenue subway line in 1916 uncovered remains that had been left behind in the old burial ground and vaults at the Bedford Street Methodist Church site. In a report entitled “The Catacombs of Seventh Avenue,” an engineer for the Bureau of Subway Construction detailed the discoveries and described the “huge underground tomb” still present where the church once stood. Constructed of brick and stone, it included 20 separate vaults and two lengthy passages that led to the individual burial chambers. The remains of about 50 people were found at the site and taken to Mount Olivet Cemetery for reburial.

For more than a century the Bedford Street Methodist Church stood at the heart of Greenwich Village. Today Seventh Avenue cuts through the former church site, and passengers on the 1 train ride through what was once the burial place of the Village’s earliest Methodist congregation.

A 2018 aerial view of the southeast corner of the Bedford and Morton Streets, the former site of the Bedford Street Methodist Church and its burial places. Arrow denotes approximate location. (NYCThen&Now)

Location of the Beford Street Methodist Church reburial plot at Mount Olivet Cemetery (Mount Olivet Cemetery Map, with notation by Chris Bendall, Nov 2022)

Sources: Perris’ 1854 Maps of the City of New York, Vol 5 Pl 59; Annals of New York Methodism (Seaman 1892); The American Metropolis, from Knickerbocker Days to the Present Time, Vol 3 (Moss 1897); Nooks & Corners of Old New York (Hemstreet 1899); From Abyssianian to Zion: A Guide to Manhattan’s Houses of Worship (Dunlap 2004); “A Tour Around New York,” Evening Post, Mar 4, 1887; “To Dig Up Bodies Long Buried,” The Sun, Sep 23 1913; “Historic Church to Go,” New York Times, Oct 3, 1913; “Old Graves Block Street,”  New York Tribune, Oct 24, 1913; “Old Church to Go,” New York Times, Nov 13, 1913; Laws of the State of New York Passed at the 137^th Session of the Legislature, Begun January 7^th 1914 and ended March 27^th, 1914, Vol. I, Ch. 138 (New York 1914); “Wrecking of Bedford Street M.E. Church Removes a Historic Shrine,” New York  Press, Dec 18 1913; “Ancient Cemeteries Dug Up in Subways,” New York Times, June 11 1916; Chris Bendall, personal communication, Nov 19, 2022

John Street Methodist Church Graveyard and Vaults

A 19th-century depiction of the Methodist Church erected on John Street in 1768 (NYPL)

“The church first, and then my family” was the motto of New York City merchant William Lupton, one of the founding members of the John Street Methodist Church. The first Methodist church in America, the John Street Church was erected in 1768 at 44 John Street in Lower Manhattan and rebuilt in 1818 and 1841. Considered the cradle of American Methodism, the John Street Church still stands today. It has an active congregation and a museum that tells the story of this historically and religiously significant property.

John Street Methodist Church and adjoining graveyard in 1807

The lot connected with John Street Church was the first place Methodists used for a burial ground in New York, and they had burial vaults under the original church building. But by the early 1800s, the congregation had acquired lots in a Methodist cemetery further uptown and stopped burying their dead at John Street. In 1817, when the congregation tore down their first chapel to build a new house of worship on the same site, they disturbed bodies buried there. Some of the bones were gathered together and reburied under one end of the new church and some were removed to other burial grounds.

Obituary of William Lupton, interred at John Street Methodist Church in 1796

William Lupton’s remains were among those removed and reburied during construction of the new church in 1817. Lupton had a private vault under the church where he was interred in 1796 when he died at age 69.  One of the wealthiest of the original trustees, Lupton was an Englishman who came to America in 1753 as a quartermaster in the British Army and served in the French and Indian War. Married twice—first to Joanna Schuyler and, after her death, to Elizabeth Roosevelt—he had eleven children. Lupton and his family lived next door to the John Street Church for some time. Legend has it, when a fire broke out in the neighborhood Lupton instructed the firemen to save the church before his home, thus proving him faithful to his motto.

Construction projects at the church in the 1880s and again in the 1940s uncovered the bones of more early Methodists; these were reburied beneath the basement of the present church building. More recently, in 1986 construction workers found fragments of human bones during work on the foundation wall of the church, and these also were reburied under the basement. Archaeologist Sherene Baugher, who led excavations at the church when the bones were found in 1986, observes that “the basement of the church has become a burial ground and, in a sense, a sacred site.”

John Street Methodist Church, July 2020 (John Street Church)

2018 aerial view of the John Street Methodist Church, overshadowed by surrounding office towers (NYCThen&Now)

Sources: Bridges’ 1807 Plan of the city of New-York; “Died,” Daily Advertiser, Apr 11, 1796; Lost Chapters Recovered from the Early History of American Methodism (Wakeley 1858); “The General Conference,” The Methodist, Jun 4, 1864; Annals of New York Methodism (Seaman 1892); John Street Methodist Church: An Archaeological Investigation (LPC 1991); “The John Street Methodist Church: An Archaeological Excavation with Native American Cooperation,” Historical Archaeology 43(1); From Abyssinian to Zion: A Guide to Manhattan’s Houses of Worship (Dunlap 2004); Encyclopedia of New York City, 2nd ed. (Jackson et al 2010)

German Catholic Cemetery, 124th Street

An 1869 notice in the New York Herald announces the removal of remains from the German Catholic Cemetery on 124th Street

Even as New York’s Catholic population grew from no more than 200 at the end of the Revolutionary era to 400,000 by the mid-19th century, there was but one official cemetery for Manhattan’s Catholics, each closing in turn as it reached capacity. The first was around St. Peter’s in Barclay street, the second at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, the third on 11^th Street, and, in 1848,  Calvary Cemetery in Queens. Parishes throughout Manhattan were expected to bury their dead in the authorized cemetery and were prohibited by the diocese (archdiocese after 1850) from establishing graveyards adjacent to their churches or elsewhere.

But Manhattan’s early German Catholics were eager to have their own burial places, separate from the Irish that dominated the designated cemetery for the diocese/archdiocese. Several German Catholic parishes established cemeteries, or attempted to do so, and were censured for their defiance and their burial grounds closed. One of these was the Church of St. John the Baptist on 30^th Street, whose trustees opened a cemetery on property they acquired in 1848.  State Senator Erastus Brooks provides an account of this cemetery in an 1855 editorial letter:

On 123d and 124th streets, there is a burial ground covering eight lots, belonging to the Church of St. John the Baptist, built on 30th street. The owners were Germans. They built a church and selected a suitable place for the burial of their dead. For some time, without restraint from the Archbishop or others, they were permitted to inter the members of their congregation in these grounds, which were sacred both to the memory of the dead and to their friends. The Archbishop interposed, and prohibited the use of the grounds for this purpose.

The congregation, in a spirit of German independence, continued to bury their dead there, notwithstanding the prohibition of the Archbishop. It was then announced by authority from the pulpit, that burial services would not be permitted there any longer. Still the congregation persisted in exercising their rights as men, and in discharging their duty to the dead. For a time the dead were buried without the usual funeral ceremonies or services. The Archbishop in the exercise of his highhanded power, then took the Priest from the congregation, and, as a consequence, the Church had to be closed, and was closed for some time.

The German Catholic Cemetery depicted on an 1851 map of upper Manhattan. Although it appears here that the cemetery extended over entire block, other sources indicate it was confined to the center of the block, in the area denoted by arrow

An 1851 map of upper Manhattan shows this German Catholic Cemetery and implies that it extended the entire block bounded by 123^rd and 124^th Streets and 7^th and 8^th Avenues (now Adam Clayton Powell and Frederick Douglass Boulevards). However, other documentary evidence and historical accounts indicate the cemetery was confined to a parcel at the middle of the block (indicated by arrow on the map detail above). No evidence has been found of the number nor names of those interred there.

As noted in Senator Brooks’ letter, the archdiocese interdicted St. John the Baptist for their cemetery, as well as for other disagreements with church authorities, and the parish was consistently troubled until it was reorganized under the control of Capuchin Franciscan friars in 1871. In 1869, the remains from the German Catholic Cemetery on 124^th Street were removed to Calvary Cemetery. The property was subsequently sold to help fund a new church building for the resurrected St. John the Baptist parish; this building still stands at West 30^th Street. Apartment buildings are at the former site of the German Catholic Cemetery on 124th Street.

2018 aerial view of the German Catholic Cemetery site today (NYCThen&Now)

Sources: Map of New-York North of 50th St (Dripps 1851); “Catholic Cemetery and Catholic Burials,” New-York Freemans Journal and Catholic Register, Aug 23, 1851; The Controversy Between Senator Brooks and † John, Archbishop of New York…(Tisdale 1855); “Special Notices,” New York Herald, April 4, 1869; The Catholic Church in the United States of America (Catholic Editing Co. 1914); The Immigrant Church: New York’s Irish and German Catholics, 1815-1865 (Dolan 1975); Encyclopedia of New York City, 2nd ed. (Jackson et al 2010); Ennis Francis Houses 1A Documentary Report (Geismar 2010)