Originally, part of Trinity’s “church farm,” St. John’s Park was Trinity Church’s first real estate development project. Conceived in the early 19th century as a square of elegant townhouses, Trinity enclosed the square bounded by Varick, Laight, Hudson, and Beech Streets, built St. John’s Chapel to serve as the parish church, and sold lots around the perimeter, deeding the exclusive use of the square to residents (an example followed years later by Grammercy Square.)

By 1827, the neighborhood was fashionable, and the park was landscaped with flowering trees and gardens, but it only lasted a generation. By the middle of the 19th century, the City’s elite citizens were moving uptown. In 1851, when Cornelius Vanderbilt laid tracks for the Hudson River Railroad on the west side of the square, St. John’s Park owners decamped en masse, and the mansions around the square became rooming houses. Trinity had maintained the right to sell the land with the consent of two-thirds of the owners, so in 1866 Trinity sold the park to Vanderbilt for $1 million, split between the church and the lot owners.