The Churches of New York/ Introduction

Even a veteran New Yorker is surprised to encounter, perhaps on a casual stroll in a less-frequented neighborhood, one of the Catholic parishes of New York. Catholic churches pop up in the most unexpected places yet, with the exception of St. Patrick’s cathedral, keep a low profile in the cityscape. Although their architecture spans the entire history of the city and the Archdiocese from 1800 to 1970 and beyond, they rarely figure in guidebooks or New York Times write-ups. The Archdiocese itself is reluctant, one suspects, to draw attention to the artistic and historic worth of these churches for obvious short-term financial reasons (see below). Yet,the more than one hundred churches in Manhattan include many masterpieces representative of their respective eras.

Most of the New York parishes are modest affairs – in comparison, say, with their more monumental Chicago counterparts. But there is hardly any other place in this country that can claim such a continuous tradition of church building. Visiting the parishes of New York is a graduate level course in Catholic Church history in the United States. Moreover, these churches have on the whole preserved their furnishings, interiors and the flavor of the past far better than their suburban sisters. This is owing in part to the innate conservatism of the New York Catholic – what is once put in place is likely to stay there – but even more so to lack of money. For many of the parishes in Manhattan have few parishioners and fewer resources. This is evident in the structural damage the visitor all too often encounters.

We may divide the architecture of New York Catholic churches into five eras. From 1800 to 1850, in the first beginnings of the Archdiocese, Catholics either acquired Protestant churches or utilized the neo- classical style (and, in the case of the old cathedral, mixed with an extremely early neo-Gothic!). These ancient edifices strike us as strange – they still so strongly reflect the spirit of the surrounding Yankee Protestant culture. From 1850 to 1890 the Victorian neo – Gothic flowered (St. Patrick’s, of course, and many parish churches). 1890 through the early 1920’s saw the Golden Age. Churches like St. Vincent Ferrer, Blessed Sacrament, and St. Patrick’s Lady Chapel showed a new creativity and finesse supported by the increasing financial resources of wealthy patrons and religious orders. While Gothic retained its status as New York’s ecclesiastical style of choice,  it competed with strong beaux arts, baroque and even Romanesque currents. From the 1920’s till 1960 some fine work was still being done but on a lesser scale and often with a less sure hand. Finally, between 1960 and 1975. Catholic church architecture in Manhattan declined into ineptitude and absurdity. Since then, the building of churches has ceased  aside  from  the need to replace a handful of buildings.

In the last 30 years the Archdiocese has struggled to reduce the number of parishes in Manhattan not to build new churches or enlarge existing ones.The greatest threat to the parishes of Manhattan has been the dramatic improvement in the quality of life of many of the city neighborhoods – and the accompanying rise in real estate values. Many of the old churches of the city sit on property that is now very valuable indeed. The temptation to cash in on this resource has already cost New York Catholics several acknowledged masterpieces (e.g. St. Ann’s).  Archbishop Dolan is taking a new look at the existing roster of parishes. The last “realignment,” although devastating in terms of the loss of art and history, was far less severe than it could have been. We need to record the history that is before us in order to preserve it – or before it disappears irretrievably. In addition, over the last few years there have been major renovations of a number of churches – more or less successful. These attempts at restoration also deserve attention they have not yet received.

In this series, I hope to introduce you to many of these churches, to mark out the high points and to sketch out the history both of church architecture in this city and of New York Catholicism itself. I hope to convince you that the churches of New York possess an artistic, historical and above all symbolic worth – in the “capital of the world”- far in excess of any short-term real estate value.