New York City - St. Paul's Chapel

From Trinity Church it's a short walk over to St. Paul's Chapel. Along the way you pass by Zuccoti Park, which was on the news a lot a few years ago during the Occupy Wall Street protests. On this visit it was much quieter, filled with people taking pictures of the Christmas lights. I stopped and got a picture of this sculpture called Joie de Vivre.



And then I made it to St. Paul's Chapel. The church was built in 1766 and is the oldest surviving church building in Manhattan. It's also the only colonial-era church and the oldest public building in continuous use in Manhattan.



St. Paul's Chapel survived the Great Fire of 1776 thanks to a bucket brigade that ran from the roof of the church to the Hudson River. When New York served as the country's first capitol, George Washington attended services here.



The church and its cemetery are less than 100 yards from the sprawling World Trade Center complex. Despite being so close to the Twin Towers, the old church received almost no damage from the September 11 attacks. The building and its stained glass windows remained intact. It's thought that a large sycamore tree in the cemetery absorbed most of the falling debris. It's an interesting contrast to stand in the cemetery now and seeing the One World Trade Center tower looming large above the centuries-old graves.





And the view of the inside:



I exited the hushed quiet of the sanctuary and returned to busy streets of Lower Manhattan, heading across the street to a park by the Woolworth Building. The iconic skyscraper was built in 1913, and was the tallest building in the world until 1929.



As I headed back across the street, I walked by the old church again. I stuck the camera through the bars of the fence and managed to get one more shot from the cemetery:



And for a little comparison, here's a shot of the old church that I took during a visit to New York in 2006 during a blizzard: