The First Methodist Church and Parsonage in America, John Street, New York

This street view features a plainly built two-story church and forecourt sited between more modest dwellings. A man stands in the arched doorway of the church. On the sidewalk, a couple approaches three men in conversation at the center of the image; another man approaches them from the street. At right, a woman stands at the entry stoop of a small yellow-timbered home with a pitched roof (probably the parsonage); nearby on the sidewalk, a water-carrier turns to greet the woman.

This print shows the Wesley Chapel (dedicated by Philip Embury on Oct. 30, 1768, as cited in the inscription), even though, in 1817, this building was torn down, and replaced with a larger chapel in 1818. This second building was later razed in order to widen John Street from Broadway to the East River. The third chapel, a smaller building than the second chapel, was built on the same site in 1841. Curiously, this lithograph, produced about twenty years later, depicts the then no-longer-existing first building.

In 1768, when the Society had built its first church, it was a blue stucco "barn" called the Wesley Chapel, erected on a site that would become its permanent location. Its simple structural design was attributed to Barbara Heck (1734–1804), who had arrived in New York with her husband from Ireland around 1860. Known as the "mother of American Methodism," Heck was inspired by the preaching of John Wesley (1703– 1791), an English cleric and theologian, who led the Methodist movement within the Church of England. In 1765, with the recent arrival in New York of Philip Embury (1729–1775), who had been a preacher in Ireland, Heck recruited him to lead the first Methodist congregation, which eventually included Irish immigrants and African immigrants (some enslaved).

The third chapel building (erected in 1841 in the Georgian style) remains at 44 John Street, between Nassau and William Streets in New York City's Financial District. Considered the cradle of American Methodism, this John Street Church (a NYC Landmark) has an active congregation and a museum with objects conveying the history and religious significance of this property.