JOHN. It’s probably the most common given name in the English language. Most Johns walking around today are likely named for their father, or a prominent family member, who were in turn named for their own father, or prominent family member, and so on back through the centuries. There are a trio of John Streets in NYC, one in DUMBO in Brooklyn, another in Port Richmond, Staten Island in the shadow of the Bayonne Bridge, and today’s John Street in Lower Manhattan, which runs from Broadway to Water Street a block south of Fulton Street. Its easternmost block between water and South is also called Burling Slip.
It’s one of the few NYC streets that carries someone’s first name. It’s just as well, too, because the John for which it was named had a difficult last name to spell. His name was John Harpendingh, a landowner in the 17th Century New Netherland era whose occupation is variously given as a tanner (a preparer of animal hides to make leather) or a shoemaker. Before his death he bequeathed some of his property to the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church.
There’s a very old building on John Street that bears mentioning…
John Street United Methodist Church, the third iteration of a church began by Irish Wesleyan Methodists and first constructed in this site in 1768. This church building (1841) is older than the present Trinity Church building at Wall Street and Broadway, but not as old as St. Paul’s Chapel on Broadway and Fulton Streets (1766). Philip Embury was the founder of the first Methodist society in North America.
A slave named Peter Williams was one of many African American members of Philip Embury’s society. He became sexton of Wesley Chapel and, with James Varick and others, formed what later became the Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.
In 1817 the chapel was torn down to make way for a larger structure, dedicated in 1818. A third (and smaller) edifice was erected in 1841 and is still in use today. [United Methodist Church]
Meanwhile, at the east end of John Street at Water is found the baffling (for those who don’t know how to read it) Conheim’s Clock.
As always, “comment…as you see fit.” I earn a small payment when you click on any ad on the site.
3/21/23
3 comments
There is also St. John’s Place in Brooklyn, and Avenue St. John in The Bronx. St, John’s University, before its move to Queens in the 1950s, occupied a campus on Willoughby Avenue in Brooklyn about a mile from its namesake thoroughfare.
Named for the Gospels’ St. John
Part of Brooklyn’s Warren Street (Court Street to the Esat River) was also John Street. The name was changed in 1835, probably to eliminate duplication with the John Street in DUMBO.