St. Paul's Chapel, New York City, Visitor Guide & Things to Do Nearby

St. Paul's Chapel at 209 Broadway in New York City is Manhattan's oldest surviving church building and the oldest public building in the city still in continuous use. Completed in 1766, it predates the United States, and it is best known as the place where George Washington worshipped after his first inauguration.

The story behind it

St. Paul's was built as a chapel for Trinity Church, on what was then the northern edge of the growing city. Its Georgian stone design looks calm and modest beside the towers that now surround it, and it has outlasted almost everything built around it.

The chapel's big moment came in 1789. Washington was inaugurated as the first president at Federal Hall on Wall Street, and afterwards he went to pray. The original Trinity Church had been destroyed in a fire in 1776 and had not yet been rebuilt, so St. Paul's took its place. Washington kept attending services here while New York was the national capital. In September 2001 the chapel stood just across from the World Trade Center site and became a place of rest and support for rescue and recovery workers.

What to look for

• The pew associated with Washington inside the chapel, a quiet marker of the day the first president came here to pray.
• The simple Georgian interior, with its pale walls, tall windows and slender columns, which feels far more like a colonial meeting house than a big city church.
• The churchyard with its old gravestones, a patch of green and weathered stone that sits right next to the traffic of Broadway.
• The contrast between the small brownstone chapel and the glass towers rising behind it, best seen from the churchyard.

Tips for your visit

• Allow 20 to 30 minutes to see the interior and the churchyard, longer if you like to read the displays.
• It is a working church, so check current opening hours and service times before you go, and keep your voice low inside.
• Morning usually means a calmer visit and softer light in the churchyard.
• The World Trade Center site, the 9/11 Memorial and Fulton Street are all a short walk away, so it fits easily into a Lower Manhattan day.

See it on a quest

Lower East Side Murder Mystery, New York is a good way to see the chapel as part of a longer walk rather than a single photo stop. You reach it on foot as one stop on the route, the app tells you about each place as you arrive, and you solve a puzzle in front of what you are looking at. One ticket covers the whole group.

TriBeCa, New York City Detective Mystery: Infiltrate a Secret Society. also passes St. Paul's Chapel. It leads you through the surrounding streets with the story of each place told as you reach it, and a puzzle to solve on the spot. One ticket covers the whole group, and you can start whenever you like.