St. John’s Park was laid out in order to attract persons to the chapel, which, when built, in 1807, had been spoken of as “too far uptown,” small congregations for the first year or so justifying this contention. As a means of attracting dwellers to the vicinity, the park was planned, and took the name of the chapel. This design succeeded beyond all expectations. Alexander Hamilton and Gen. Schuyler were among the early migrants north of Great Jones Street, and the section soon received the stamp of fashionable approval.
Many of these old dwellings still stand. You may see them[Pg 235] on Hudson Street, on Laight Street, on Vestry Street, with their dormer windows, their fanlight doorways, and high porches, flanked by tall iron posts. In those days, St. John’s vied with Trinity itself, and with St. Paul’s.
In 1839, when Trinity Church, deemed unsafe, was pulled down and work on the present structure was begun, many communicants of that church came to St. John’s, following their great organist, Dr. Hodges, who played here during the seven years occupied in the building of the new Trinity. Organists who followed were devoted to the task of maintaining St. John’s excellent repute in music.
In 1876, long after the environment of this chapel had been given over to commercialism, George F. Le Jeune came to the chapel as organist, and under his ministrations the chapel was famous as a place where the most excellent sacred music in the city was to be heard. Le Jeune it was who introduced the cathedral form of service in this city. In 1877 he instituted a series of musical services which continued at St. John’s for ten years, and served to familiarize the public with a large number of cantatas and oratorios not generally known. Old residents often speak of the music they used to hear at St. John’s, and there is not a Sunday morning that does not find some one of them here, reviving old memories. This is not difficult, because the music at St. John’s is still altogether excellent.
South of the church stands the vine-clad parish house. Here, each Saturday morning, year in and year out, rain or shine, sixty-seven loaves of bread are distributed to the poor women and children of the district, in accordance with provisions of the will of Gen. Leake, a wealthy communicant of the parish, who died in 1792, leaving $5,000 to be put out at interest, the income to be laid out in sixpenny wheaten loaves, to be distributed among the poor. This charity, known as the “Leake Dole of Bread,” has been faithfully observed for more than a century.
Back of the chapel there was a little street called St. John’s Lane, a beautiful tree-shaded bypath in the old days. In the course of years the city advanced, blotting it out of usefulness. Few know it still exists. It is a quiet, deserted, odd little nook of a place, a harbor where shelter may be found from the roar of the city.
By noticing the various odd ways in which some men make a living in New York, a reporter on the Sun secured interesting material for an article which the editor entitled, “Little Wants of a Big City.” A selection from the article follows:
Anybody can be a clerk or a clergyman or a bank president or a teamster. It takes more individuality to strike out in a career like that of the man who works but one week in the year. This man is Santa Claus. His head is covered with a mass of snow-white hair. It falls down over his venerable shoulders and mingles with his equally white beard. The latter falls far down his chest and the old gentleman looks for all the world like the pictures of Santa Claus. Every holiday season he can be found working in some store, posing as the holiday saint, rattling shiny toys before the fascinated gaze of New York’s million children.
Fifty-one weeks in the year he works not at all, and how he subsists and has enough money to buy his little red drinks no man can tell.
The line-up man is a product of New York and of nowhere else. He belongs to a clan of agile, sinewy legged brethren who infest back yards, and his business is to shin up the poles from which are suspended innumerable clotheslines, to fix up frayed out lines, tie on new ropes and get the courtyard rigging into shipshape condition against the Monday wash. He will climb the highest pole in Harlem without the aid of a net and fix your ropes for 25 cents.