Saint Mary's Episcopal Church

St. Mary's Church, Manhattanville, the first free pew church in the city of New York and one of the first in the United States, has reached its 125th anniversary. Lawrence Street, on which the church is located, has become West 126th Street and a tapestry brick and sandstone building, erected in 1908, has replaced the original white frame structure; but throughout the scene shifting that accompanied the absorption of Manhattanville by an expanding metropolis, little St. Mary's has remained in the same location .

The earliest extant reference to Manhattanville is an advertisement in the New Y ork Spectator of July 9, 1806, which tells of its formation "in the Ninth Ward of this city, on the Bloomingdale road in front of Harlem Cove on the North River." Harlem Cove was an inlet of the Hudson River, long since filled in to form part of West 125th Street. In the days of the American Revolution a narrow road, referred to on Washington's maps as the Hollow Way and mentioned in Cooper's novel The Spy. ran along the northern bank of this inlet. From some­where among the trees along this northern bank Washington's soldiers fired the first shots in the Battle of Harlem Heights, and the ground upon which the church stands was part of the battlefield.

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