Zion-St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church

339 East 84th Street | Yorkville | built 1900

Open on the map5 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1883

    The Rev. G. A. T. Goebel organizes a Yorkville church for German immigrants

    The Rev. G. A. T. Goebel organizes the German Evangelical Church of Yorkville with fifteen founding members, who rent a small wooden church on 85th Street. Membership quickly grows to about 150, prompting the congregation to commission architect J. F. Mahoney to design a permanent home on East 84th Street.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1888

    June 3

    A German congregation lays the cornerstone of its Yorkville church

    The German Evangelical Church of Yorkville, founded in 1883 with 15 members, laid the cornerstone of this Gothic church on June 3, 1888, and inscribed its German name on the front. The $46,000 building proved too costly: it was sold at foreclosure in 1892, and Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church, another German-speaking congregation, took it over.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1892

    November 29

    Debt forces the new Lutheran church into foreclosure

    Only four years after its cornerstone is laid, the costly Gothic church building is sold at a foreclosure auction to the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society for $30,000. The following year, the newly incorporated Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church purchases the building, taking over the East 84th Street sanctuary that its Yorkville congregation still uses today.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1946

    Zion merges with St. Mark's, the church of the General Slocum victims

    In 1946 Zion merged with St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church. In 1904 St. Mark's had lost roughly 1,000 people when the excursion boat General Slocum burned in the East River during a church outing, and the disaster pushed many Germans to leave Kleindeutschland, many of them for Yorkville.

    Source: 6tocelebrate.org

  5. 2026

    February 1

    The congregation holds its final service

    On February 1, 2026, Bishop Katrina Foster of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Metro New York Synod led a final service of Holy Closure at Zion-St. Mark's. The church, built in 1888, has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1995.

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

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