parish polity

Not realising that the historic church at the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway had such an extensive real estate endowment and remains one of the chief property-holders in Manhattan with a significant acreage and Hudson Square in its portfolio, we really enjoyed reading this well-researched article on New York City’s Trinity Church.
Originally Dutch-held farm land of New Amsterdam, the area was conferred to the English Crown in 1671 and chartered by Queen Anne in 1705 as a royal grant for the establishment of an Anglican church for the Episcopal Diocese. Though more enlightened and civic-minded presently, the church once had the reputation of a predatory slumlord and an engine of gentrification—with the later still being a perennial source of contention. When Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip visited in 1976, the vestrymen of the church paid off nearly three hundred years of rent in arrears in peppercorns.