And right there where we stood, was Holy Ground
We're deep diving "Holy Ground" on this week's new AP Taylor Swift podcast episode
This week, we deep dive into Holy Ground from Taylor Swift’s album Red. We unpack the song’s themes of time, memory, and the contrast between New York City’s hustle and those still, reflective moments where we realize what truly matters. Is Holy Ground a nostalgic ode to a past relationship, a metaphor for personal growth, or both? Listen to find out!
🎧 Listen above and ⬇️ scroll below to read Jodi’s extra credit about Holy Ground in Tribeca during the American Revolution and how that could have influenced Taylor!
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🎒This Week’s Extra Credit - Brought to You by Jodi
For this week’s episode, I dove into the metaphorical meanings of “holy ground,” from the hallowed place where love first blossomed, to the more literal idea of a coffee shop named Holy Ground. It wasn’t until the end of our recording while researching if Taylor Swift holds a trademark on the phrase (she does not) that I discovered Tribeca (Taylor Swift’s NYC neighborhood) was called “Holy Ground” in the late 1700s. While the song was written before Taylor moved to NYC and is therefore only tangentially connected to the song itself, there’s enough here that I’m intrigued, and also this is exactly why we call this space “extra credit”!
Right there where we stood…
Lower Manhattan pre-American Revolution was pretty much farmland and docks. Trinity Church (resting place of Alexander Hamilton) owned much of the land, called Church Farms. Sometime between the 1750’s and 1760’s they subdivided much of the land for lease at affordable rates, allowing merchants and artisans to move in, build, and create a vibrant working-class neighborhood where they could live and work close to the docks, important for trade. What does every good neighborhood need? Homes, shops, and, of course, bars. “Taverns, Hodges says, were the center of a culture in which cartmen raced their carts each morning on the new, straight streets and amused themselves with bullbaiting, gambling, and drinking.”
And where there are bars, drinking, and sailors, you’re likely to find…a red light district. New York City was no exception, and this neighborhood became home to the city’s red light district, known as Holy Ground. Why Holy Ground? It boarded Trinity Church and St. Paul’s Church. It’s ironic, and we love irony. Per New Yorker:
“The Church Farm just west of St. Paul’s Chapel was also the site of the city’s red-light district, home to as many as five hundred prostitutes. It was known as the Holy Ground. Convenient for the sailors and laborers who worked on the wharves and docks to the west, the Holy Ground was just a short stroll away for the students of King’s College and for the rich living in fine, new houses on Broadway and working near Wall Street.”
And I guess we fell apart in the usual way
In a matter of about two decades, the area went from pristine farmland to a city of sin and squalor. But it wasn’t just the working class that ventured to the Holy Ground. “A short stroll for college students and wealthy gentlemen who resided in their lavish homes east of Broadway, the Holy Ground offered a reprieve for those eager to be entertained by the seedier side of life.” While some went to the Holy Ground for entertainment the area had quite the dark side. During the Revolutionary War, “the mutilated bodies of two soldiers were found hidden in a brothel within the Holy Ground.” The Holy Ground remained a hotspot for American soldiers despite warnings and curfews from General Washington. However, on September 21, 1776 a fire broke out in the Holy Ground, completely destroying the area including one-quarter of the city’s houses, as well as Trinity Church. A newspaper described watching the fire as “the roaring of the flames, the crash of falling houses and the widespread ruin . . . formed a scene of horror great beyond description.”
The area remained burned out and in disrepair throughout the British occupation, only to be rebuilt after the British left on Evacuation Day November 25, 1783. Once rebuilt, the area evolved and its seedy past never returned. Instead, the growth of Manhattan’s commercial waterfront led to rising rents and higher cost of land, turning the neighborhood into a much wealthier and fancier enclave than before. And while I’m skipping about 200 years of history, the neighborhood remains today a wealthy area, covering both Manhattan’s Financial District, home to the former World Trade Center and Ground Zero, as well as Tribeca, a small, upscale, mostly residential neighborhood home to Taylor Swift.