I started sketching churches in New York City largely because I was researching my family’s history in New York. My grandmother Josephine Hickey was baptized at Saint Peter’s Church on September 13, 1891. The Hickey family loved just a few blocks away at 143 Washington Street which is today at the south end of the World Trade Center Memorial site. The building no longer stands.
St Peter’s Church was founded five years before the establishment of the present day United States government. It was the first Roman Catholic parish in New York, established in 1785 on the site it now occupies. The original church was built only two years after the end of the American Revolution. Old St Peter’s Church was used for worship until 1836 when a portion of the ceiling gave way and the parish made plans to build a new and larger place of worship. By this time, the congregation of St Peter’s had grown so large that some of the parishioners who came to hear Mass had to stand outside..
The present church exterior was completed in 1840 and was ultimately declared a landmark by Federal, State and City agencies.