St. Paul's Chapel

The property occupied by the Episcopal Church St. Paul 's Chapel, Eng. St. Paul's Chapel, is in Lower Manhattan (New York) at the central main street, Broadway, with the house no. 209, and the Church Street between Fulton and Vesey Street, just east next to the World Trade Center block. It is the oldest existing church building in Manhattan and used and still surrounded by a cemetery with old grave stones and a high lattice. When the Great Fire of September 1776 after taking New York by British troops remained intact. In it, for example, prayed George Washington. It is a branch church of the larger and become powerful to be named Trinity Church seven building blocks further on Wall Street.

The church was built 1764-1766 by architect Thomas McBean under the direction of Andrew Gautier. The land on which it stands was donated to the church by Queen Anne.

1960/66, the church was added to the list of National Historic Landmark ( NRISref 2006a).

The building

The church comes with a 4-column portico to Broadway. The building stones in gray are trimmed at the edges smooth with slabs of red stone. The tower sits on the west-facing choir. Even in its proportions indicates a similarity with St. Martin-in -the-Fields. Two wooden longitudinal galleries in the hall.

Cemetery

Aerial view of Ground zero in November 2001. The location of Saint Paul's Chapel is outlined in red

Equipment

The organ was in 1964 by the organ builder Schlicker Organ Company ( Buffalo, New York) Built as a replacement for an instrument from 1950, which had been built by the Aeolian - Skinner organ builder. The instrument has 26 stops on two manuals and pedal. The Spieltrakturen are mechanical, the Registertrakturen are electro-pneumatically. After the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the instrument was initially shut down, and was cleaned in 2009 and returned to service.

Assistance center after September 11, 2001

Since the church was not in the area of collapse of the twin towers, they remained to this day stand. No disc has been destroyed. However, she was initially everywhere covered with a centimeter thick layer of dust. The chapel was opened as an auxiliary station and food distribution for the firemen, policemen and sniffer dogs, soldiers and steel workers who arrived in the following days and weeks, to save, to dig and to recover. There were emergency beds for sleep -seekers and benches for massages for those who hurt their back. And every day there was music - jazz, Mozart, Bach.