The passage of Washington through the island is commemorated by a tablet on a warehouse at 255 West Street, near Laight, which is inscribed:
TO MARK THE LANDING PLACE OF
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON,
JUNE 25, 1775,
ON HIS WAY TO CAMBRIDGE
TO COMMAND
THE AMERICAN ARMY.
St. John's Church
St. John's Church of Trinity Parish, in Varick Street close to Beach, was built in 1807. When the church was finished St. John's Park, occupying the entire block opposite—between Varick and Hudson, Laight and Beach Streets—was established for the exclusive use of residents whose houses faced it. Before it was established, the place had been a sandy beach that stretched to the river. The locality became the most fashionable of the city in 1825. By 1850 there had begun a gradual decline, for persons of wealth were moving up-town, and it degenerated to a tenement-house level after 1869, when the park disappeared beneath the foundations of the big freight depot which now occupies the site.