St. John's Chapel was designed by John McComb, Jr., in 1803 for the vestry of Trinity Church to accommodate its expanding Episcopalian congregation and to serve Trinity's planned real estate subdivision around it's newly-created St. John's Park. The chapel's hewn-oak spire reached more than two hundred feet in height, while a curved stairway to the pulpit and carved fluted pillars lent elegance to its airy, open interior. The original location of this church was one of the most attractive in New York. It stood on the eastern side of St. John's Park whose tree-shaded walks were a favorite recreational spot for the well-to-do residents of the neighborhood. But, in the second half of the 18th century, as the fashionable moved uptown and Trinity sold the park to Cornelius Vanderbilt for construction of a freight terminal, what had been a neighborhood of patrician townhouses became slovenly and ramshackle. By the 1890’s, most of the congregation had left and Trinity wanted to sell St. John’s Chapel. Holdouts at St. John’s — including the pastor, the Rev. Dr. Philip A. H. Brown, known as the Fighting Vicar — resisted the parent church. Dr. Brown died in 1909, the year that pro-demolition candidates won a vestry election at Trinity. In 1912, the City decided to widen Varick Street. In response to protests from architects and historians, a proposal to save the Chapel would have run the sidewalk and part of the street under the columns of the portico, which would be allowed to jut out into traffic. Ignoring the New York Times' editorial opinion that "to destroy it would be vandalism", Trinity Church decided to demolish the Chapel and put the site on the market for more than $200,000.