The
Renaissance Revival style former church was built in 1847 by the
Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. Matthew which first rented it to St. Mark's and subsequently sold it to them in 1857. By the end of the nineteenth century the congregation was in decline as congregants were moving elsewhere. Much of the church membership was killed in the 1904
General Slocum disaster, most of the victims being women and children, and the congregation never recovered.
General Slocum disaster In 1904, The Ladies' Aid Society (Frauenhilfsverein) chartered the
General Slocum steamboat for their summer outing on the East River. The boat caught fire and over 1000 parishioners perished in one of the worst disasters in the city's history. Thereafter Germans began moving uptown from the Lower East Side, primarily to
Yorkville and abandoned the church. The parish of St. Mark's merged with the Zion Church in Yorkville in 1946 to become
Zion St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church. == Synagogue ==