The Allen Street Presbyterian Church had its beginning in Madison Street, then Bancker, in 1816. A missionary society in 1817 built a wooden structure at a cost of a little over two thousand dollars, near the corner of Catharine Street. The society was incorporated as the "Mission Church in the City of New York," and that title has never been changed, except by common usage. In 1823 an edifice was erected at a cost of about three thousand dollars. For years the church did not prosper, and was on the point of selling its property, when the Rev. Absalom Peters offered to act as Pastor for a time without salary. He pulled the society through its troubles. The present building was erected in 1833 at a cost of twenty thousand dollars. Since then the church has been humbly prosperous. For the present, until a site is secured, the congregation will worship in the Church of the Sea and Land, in Market Street. On the same date, under the heading of "After Fifty-four Years," and "The Last Services in the Old Allen Street Church," the same paper says: Another of New York's old churches will soon be torn down. Yesterday the last services were held in the Allen Street Presbyterian Church, near Grand Street. For many years the church has been a sort of half-way house between up and down town, and its congregation has been an ever-changing one. It has never been a large nor a rich church, although it has had among its members many who are to-day wealthy, and its total membership, since its organization, is much greater than that of many a larger church. The last services were made interesting, not only by the presence of nearly all the present members, but of members of twenty and twenty-five years ago, who came from churches further up town and from Brooklyn. In the afternoon there was a union service of the church, Sunday-school, and the Ludlow Street Mission. Later the young people held a prayer-meeting, and in the evening reunion services were held. The pastor, the Rev. D. McNeill Young, read letters from many former members who had left New York, all regretting the necessity for demolishing the old building. The reading of the letters was interrupted by the puffing and rattle of the elevated trains directly in front of the door--one of the principal causes of a change of location--that made more prominent the fact that, though sentiment might desire to save the church, it could never again be a pleasant place of worship. After the letters were read familiar hymns were sung, and, without any formality, the older members and their former associates gave reminiscences of the early days of their church.