Burr gave up the house in 1807, and, the hill being cut away in the opening of streets in 1817, the house was lowered and rested on the north side of Charlton Street just east of Varick. It became a theatre later and remained such until it was torn down in 1849. A quiet row of brick houses occupies the site now.
St. John's Burying Ground
What is now a pleasant little park enclosed by Hudson, Leroy and Clarkson Streets, was part of a plot set aside for a graveyard when St. John's Chapel was built. It was called St. John's Burying-Ground. Its early limits extended to Carmine Street on one side and to Morton Street on the other. Under the law burials ceased there about 1850. There were 10,000 burials in the grounds, which, unlike the other Trinity graveyards, came to be neglected. The tombstones crumbled to decay, the weeds grew rank about them and the trees remained untrimmed and neglected.
About 1890 property owners in the vicinity began steps to have the burying-ground made into a park. Conservative Trinity resisted the project until the city won a victory in the courts and the property was bought. Relatives of the dead were notified and some of the bodies were removed. In September, 1897, the actual work of transforming the graveyard into a park was begun. Laborers with crowbars knocked over the tombstones that still remained and putting the fragments in a pit at the eastern end of the grounds covered them with earth to make a play-spot for children.
Bedford Street Church
At Morton and Bedford Streets is the Bedford Street M. E. Church. The original structure was built in 1810 in a green pasture. Beside it was a quiet graveyard, reduced somewhat in 1830 when the church was enlarged, and wiped out when the land became valuable and the present structure was set up in 1840. The church was built for the first congregation of Methodists in Greenwich Village, formed in 1808 at the house of Samuel Walgrove at the north side of Morton Street close to Bleecker.
Where Thomas Paine Lived And Died
Thomas Paine—famous for his connection with the American and French revolutions, but chiefly for his works, "The Age of Reason," favoring Deism against Atheism and Christianity; and "Common Sense," maintaining the cause of the American colonies—died in Greenwich Village June 8, 1809, having retired there in 1802.
The final years of his life were passed in a small house in Herring (now Bleecker) Street. On the site is a double tenement numbered No. 293 Bleecker Street, southeast corner Barrow. This last named street was not opened until shortly after Paine's death. It was first called Reason Street, a compliment to the author of "The Age of Reason." This was corrupted to Raisin Street. In 1828 it was given its present name.
Shortly before his death Paine moved to a frame building set in the centre of a nearby field. Grove Street now passes over the site which is between Bleecker and West Fourth Streets, the back of the building having been where No. 59 Grove Street is now.