Methodism having become a power in Great Britain, drifted across the ocean, and, in 1766, sprang up in the New World. The first Methodist service was conducted by Philip Embury, an Irish Wesleyan local preacher, in his own house in Barrack street, now Park Place, to a congregation of six persons. A class was soon formed, and the place becoming too small for the congregation, a more eligible room was secured in the neighborhood; where the little society unexpectedly sprang into public notice by the advent of Captain Thomas Webb of the English army, then stationed at Albany. Webb had served with distinction under Braddock and Wolfe, was a spiritual son of John Wesley, a man of sense and fervid eloquence, and as he preached in full uniform, laying his sword on the desk, he attracted great attention. The Rigging Loft on Horse and Cart street, now William, between Fulton and John streets, until the Opening of the first John-street church, October 30, 1768, was their temporary chapel, where many conversions occurred. The John-street church was rebuilt on the original site in 1817, and again in 1840, and is likely to long remain the monumental cradle of American Methodism.

The Forsyth street church was founded in 1790, the Duane in 1797, the Allen street and the Bedford in 1810, the Willet street in 1817, the Eighteenth street in 1829, the Green street in 1831, and the Mulberry (now the St. Paul's) in 1834. The Methodist Episcopal Church has now sixty churches and chapels on the island, valued at over two million dollars, many of which are large and beautiful structures. St. Paul's, at the corner of Fourth avenue and Twenty-second street, is perhaps the finest edifice yet reared by the denomination on Manhattan. The building is of white marble in the Romanesque order, its length being (including chapel) 146 feet, and the width 75 feet. The height of the nave is 45 feet, and the top of the spire 210 feet. The audience room contains comfortable seating for over thirteen hundred persons. The members of the Methodist church in New York, who number about thirteen thousand, retain much of the fervor and simplicity of the bygone period, while in liberality they probably far excel their forefathers. Besides the churches mentioned above there are about a dozen others, scattered over the island under various Methodist titles, and offshoots from the parent body.