The location was the foot of a high hill.
"On the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fiftieth Street, where the Cathedral now stands, stood the frame church, thirty by seventy feet, in which I was baptized in May, 1844.

A path and a road led to the Post Road which ran east of the church and bordered the Potter's Field.

To the north was the Orphan Asylum, and farther on was another cattle yard, Waltemeir's, a family well known to cattle men.

From Fiftieth Street to St.Luke's Hospital at Fifty-fourth Street there were a few frame houses, and the ground extending to Sixth Avenue was used for market gardens.

Old maps of New York show the lanes crossing this section at the time, much like the country roads we see today thirty or forty miles distant from the city.