•••Introduction•••

Just a few hundred yards away--indeed, right across the street--is another Manhattan anomaly, St. Paul's Chapel. As one of the few remaining colonial structures in Lower Manhattan, it is the area's oldest continuously used public building, not to mention its only remaining colonial church, St. Paul's is an exceedingly rare reminder that this corner of Manhattan Island was once regarded as a rural retreat. Built between 1764 and 1766, its original Anglican parishioners were farmers located on the northern fringes of the colonial port of New York. Today, the chapel with its churchyard forms a small green oasis of the past amidst the hustle and bustle of modern New York City's financial district.

•••History and Architecture•••

The chapel's architecture and interior decoration are as historically evocative as its former congregants. Built in the Georgian Classic-Revival style using local stone, St. Paul's resembles a smaller version of St. Martin's-in-the-Field near London's Trafalgar Square--although St. Martin's appears pristinely white whereas St. Paul's is constructed of local mica-schist and brownstone. Pierre L'Enfant, best known for his pioneering city plan for Washington, D.C., designed St. Paul's dramatic alter piece, "Glory," which depicts the tablets of the Ten Commandments at the foot of Mt. Sinai.

When Himself and Yours Truly visited St. Paul's Chapel in April of this year, we found it by chance. We had deboarded our Battery Park-bound bus to pay our respects at the site of the World Trade Center. Spying the old church across the street, we noticed a fair amount of activity, with people coming and going. We entered as most of the rescue workers would have done, through the churchyard doors at the rear of the chapel. To our surprise, we found that we already knew this place. This was little church we'd heard about and seen on so many news reports during the weeks after 9-11.

We saw impromptu shrines of the type that appeared all over New York during that time--poignant reminders of lives lost and grief endured by families who had too few answers about their missing loved one. We saw offerings of mementos of all kinds left for the workers: teddy bears and t-shirts, notes of thanks and support, flags of all sizes from many nations. We saw a manikin draped in a liturgical garment entirely covered with dozens of colorful policy, fire, and rescue patches that hung loosely like the feathers on King Kamehameha's robes. We saw a cross fashioned from two sections of a heavy chain, the links welded to hold bar of the cross firmly in place. And under a window, we saw a simply cot covered with stuffed animals, a telling reminder of the comfort offered at St. Paul's.

"To the greater glory of God and in recognition of the enduring links between the City of London and the City of New York. Forged in adversity - September 11, 2001."

•••Location, Hours, and Loose Ends•••

As for the felled sycamore, the tree that shielded the church from the worst of the fallout from collapsing buildings on 9-11, it will be memorialized at the chapel by a sculpture that is actually molded from the tree's stump. A new tree, a 21-foot-high Norway spruce christened the Tree of Hope, has taken the place of the sycamore in the northwest corner of the churchyard.