St. John's Park was a 19th-century park and square, and the neighborhood of townhouses around it, in what is now the Tribeca neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. The square was bounded by Varick Street, Laight Street, Hudson Street and Beach Street,[1] now also known for that block as Ericsson Place.[2][3] Although the name "St. John's Park" is still in use, it is no longer a park and is inaccessible to the public.[4]
The land was part of a plantation owned by an early settler to New Netherland and was later owned by the English Crown, who deeded it to Trinity Church. The church built St. John's Chapel and laid out "Hudson Square", creating New York City's first development of townhouses around a private park. By 1827 the neighborhood had become known as "St. John's Park" and remained fashionable until about 1850. In 1866 it was sold to Cornelius Vanderbilt's Hudson River Railway Company and became the location of St. John's Park Freight Depot, the railroad's southern terminus. The terminal was demolished in 1927 to allow construction of exits from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's Holland Tunnel.
The decline of St. John's Park began in the late 1840s and early 1850s when many neighborhoods around it and nearby in Lower Manhattan lost their wealthy residents, who began to move uptown. In particular, when Cornelius Vanderbilt laid railroad tracks for the Hudson River Railroad along the west side of the square in 1851, St. John's Park owners began to leave in large numbers.[24] In 1867, the New York Times wrote about that time: "[W]hen the iron horse began to snort along the streets, and the turmoil of traffic and travel invaded the North River side [of St. John's Park], the "old fogies" became disgusted, and rapidly retreated to more secluded locations."[6] Over the next dozen or so years, the elegant townhouses and mansions around the square and nearby gradually became boarding houses, and the inhabitants of the neighborhood changed from fashionable Knickerbockers to clerks, tradesmen and mechanics. The square itself picked up the nickname of "Hash Square".[6]
Trinity had maintained the right to sell the land with the consent of two-thirds of the owners of the lots. As New York continued to develop, land in lower Manhattan became increasingly valuable, so in 1866 Trinity sold the park to Vanderbilt for $1 million, split between the church and the lot owners.[12][25][26] The New York Times commented "The omnivorous appetite of improvement has swept away one more breathing-place in the lower part of the City,"[5][6] but also said:
The transfer to the railroad Company is not to be regretted. As a park it has never been available, save to the few who rented [sic] property nearby. The people now living there are tenants and wanderers, and there are very few property rights that can be damaged by the change. The establishment of a great freighting business there will pretty surely open up all the streets from Franklin to Canal for mercantile business, and add vastly to the wealth of the west side of the Ward ... And so, while we cannot repress a feeling of sorrow when we see the remorseless hand of Improvement sweeping down historical monuments, we find consolation in the fact that this particular improvement will be for the benefit of the City, and especially of the locality most nearly affected.[6]
Decades later, in 1918, the neighborhood received another blow when St. John's Chapel was torn down.[4]