St. John's Park

In 1866 it was sold to Cornelius Vanderbilt's Hudson River Railway Company and became the location of St. John's Park Freight Depot, the railroad's southern terminus.

Trinity received permission from the city's Common Council to enclose the square – whose southern boundary had moved north to Beach Street – and begin development.

[12] The square and park began to attract upscale residents,[11] and was continually upgraded, with the addition of gaslight and curbstones, the laying out of streets around the square – which the church laid out, graded and named, but then ceded to the city,[18] the construction of a fence around the park in 1866[5] to which residents received keys, and extensive landscaping,[12][6] including gravel paths and flowerbeds, and trees such as catalpas, cottonwoods, horse chestnuts and silver birches.

"[6] Over the next dozen or so years, the elegant townhouses and mansions around the square and nearby gradually became boarding houses, and the inhabitants of the neighborhood changed from fashionable Knickerbockers to clerks, tradesmen and mechanics.

As New York continued to develop, land in lower Manhattan became increasingly valuable, so in 1866 Trinity sold the park to Vanderbilt for $1 million, split between the church and the lot owners.

[12][25][26] The New York Times commented "The omnivorous appetite of improvement has swept away one more breathing-place in the lower part of the City,"[5][6] but also said: The transfer to the railroad Company is not to be regretted.

[4] Immediately after acquiring the property, Vanderbilt put up a one-story train shed as a temporary measure[27] to terminate the new West Side Line, but soon, in 1867, construction of a state-of-the art 4-acre (1.6-hectare), $2 million "St. John's Park Freight Depot"[5] began when 200 trees were cut down in the square.

[12][28] The three-story red brick terminal, designed by John Butler Snook with Romanesque details,[27][29] featured a bronze statue of Vanderbilt, which diarist George Templeton Strong called "bestial", on a 150-foot pediment.

[27] The advent of the terminal transformed the lower West Side into a hodgepodge of "bonded and general storage warehouses",[33] stockyards, abattoirs, grain depots, and stables where cattle, sheep and hogs were bought, sold, slaughtered and shipped.

[30] This transition started even before the terminal was constructed – in 1866 the American Express Company Stable was built at 4-8 Hubert Street – but picked up in speed once the depot was in operation.

She reported that the local population was largely "longshoreman, laborers and teamsters" of Italian and German descent, living in mansions turned into tenements, some of which had as many as 800 residents.

[2][4] The Holland Tunnel Exit Plaza,[10] located within the city block now owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ),[37] consists of a teardrop-shaped roadway.

[40][41] The inner portion of the plaza, inside the rotary, is still referred to as "St. John's Park"[4] and appears on Google Maps as such,[42] but the property is marked with "No Trespassing" signs[43] and the interior is thus not accessible to pedestrians.