Zion St. Marks, at 339 East 84th Street, was built in 1889 for The German Evangelical Church of Yorkville and designed by Michael J. Fitz Mahoney. The church, a stunning example of neo-Gothic architecture, has been a community space since the 19th century.

When the Zion Evangelical Lutheran congregation moved into the building in 1892, it began offering German language mass, religious education, and social events. The congregation became a vital part of the Yorkville German community, and also provided a heaven for members of the Lower East Side’s St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, after that congregation was decimated by the 1904 General Slocum disaster when an excursion steamboat caught fire and sank during a chartered trip for the congregation. The two congregations merged in 1946 to create today’s Zion-St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Just as the congregation proudly proclaimed its German heritage in the 19th century with an inscription in German on the facade, the church maintains that identity today, and continues to support Yorkville’s German community, with bi-lingual Mass in German and English, as well as with German language classes, and German film programs.