St. Mary
440 Grand Street
By 1826 the two Catholic churches in New York City (St. Peter and (old) St. Patrick) were bursting at the seams (they also covered Brooklyn and Northern New Jersey). In that year a Presbyterian church was bought on Sheriff Street in what later was called the Lower East Side. This was St. Mary’s, the third Catholic church in New York City. The church came with a tower and a bell – the first Catholic bell in New York. Catholic “chapels” had not been permitted to have bells in Ireland and the habit had carried over to St. Peter’s and St. Patrick’s. 1) In 1827 St. Mary’s became the first church dedicated by a bishop of New York (Du Bois). A school was operated even then in the basement. 2)
Catholics would not enjoy this first church for long. In 1831 a burglar set fire to the church “either influenced by hatred or incensed at his failure to find what he expected.” (So Shea; Others go further and claim the arson was the work of the Nativists 3)). The church was totally destroyed and the pastor died shortly after overwhelmed by grief. $9,000 was somehow found by the “not very large or wealthy” congregation to buy land on Grand Street in 1831. Work on the present St Mary’s was commenced the following year with the cornerstone being laid by Bishop Du Bois.
Those early years of the Church in New York, prior to Archbishop Hughes, were times of hardship and challenge. The Archdiocese would not see the like again until the societal collapse of the 1960’s accompanied by the spiritual collapse initiated by the Council. The congregation of St Mary’s had hardly any funds. Cholera raged in the immediate neighborhood. Shea himself says he witnessed five coffins brought out of just one house in St. Mary’s parish in one morning. Yet despite it all the new church of St. Mary’s was finished in 1833. Shea records that for the dedication on June 9th Bishop Du Bois celebrated a pontifical high mass before a packed congregation “including many Protestants of distinction.” The music was “Haydn’s First Mass, rendered extremely well by the organist and choir.”
From that date on the chronicle of St. Mary’s is one of expansion: Of the founding of schools, pious societies and other charitable or educational initiatives; of the repeated creation other parishes within the former bounds of St. Mary’s as the overcrowded parish became unmanageable. And, as always, care for the poor remained fundamental to the life of this parish. A pastor of St. Mary’s became the bishop of Chicago in 1844; in 1876 it was estimated that three hundred religious vocations had comefrom St. Mary’s schools. And there were efforts to make the old church more Catholic and splendid. In 1864, St Mary’s acquired a magnificent new facade and towers; in 1870-71 the church was greatly expanded by the addition of a new sanctuary.
The celebration of the 50th anniversary of the parish’s foundation was an event of rare splendor in the city. A solemn High mass was celebrated – later, magnificent vespers were sung. (Shea’s repeated detailed descriptions of divine services show that at least at this early date the “Irish” were not as indifferent to the liturgical life as they were later reputed to be.) For those present who could remember the foundation of the parish in 1826, the development of the Catholic Church in New York City must have seemed plainly miraculous!
By 1913 the population of the parish had drastically declined ( from 14,000 in 1881 to 1.500) and this part ofthe Lower East Side was well on its way to becoming an almost exclusively Jewish area. Nevertheless St. Mary’s still had very active schools for girls and boys. The nearby chapel of the St. Rose Home for Incurable Cancer, founded by Rose Hawthorne and her sisters, was attended from St. Mary’s. 4)
A number of charitable works are associated with St Mary’s. In addition to the works of Rose Hawthorne, Fr. Drumgoole, founder of several charitable initiatives, had been sexton at St. Mary’s for many years befroe becoming a priest.
Gradually St. Mary’s, like the other ancient parishes of this part of the city once so prominent in Catholic life, receded from the memory of the Catholics of New York. The parish’s decline continued – the schools had closed by 1939 and it is claimed that in the 1940’s the closure of the parish itself was contemplated. 5) But after World War II things changed again – the Lower East Side was gradually transformed into a Hispanic (at first mainly Puerto Rican) ghetto. The neighborhood became very scary indeed – yet paradoxically it was a blessing for old St. Mary’s: it had once again acquired a congregation. And from those days to the present, St. Mary’s functions almost as a national Hispanic parish. In recent years, the vicinity of St. Mary’s has benefitted from the general revival of Manhattan and the expansion of Chinatown in particular.
St. Mary’s – the very simplicity of the name testifies to the great age of this church. “For it is Mary, Mary, plain as any name can be…” (George M. Cohan) A visitor approaches St. Mary’s through a forbidding, very un-Manhattan-like landscape of isolated high-rise government housing projects and nondescript “low-rise” commercial buildings. Such is the abominable fruit of urban renewal. The ancient church of St. Mary’s sits “naked” in this post-apocalyptic world. Whereas most New York churches are embedded in a streetscape of residential or commercial buildings with only their façades visible, St. Mary’s stands isolated and forlorn, its unfinished sides mercilessly exposed to view.
The central gray ashlar nave is either the oldest or second oldest existing structure built as a Catholic church in Manhattan – depending how you classify old St. Patrick’s cathedral, which is older but was largely destroyed by fire and rebuilt in the 1860’s. 6) The quaint towers of the façade strike a slightly bizarre note in the midst of the surrounding emptiness. A number of Manhattan churches contemporary with St. Mary’s were supposed to receive a “twin tower” façade; in the case of St. Mary the plans were realized. They were the work of that ubiquitous architect of the Victorian age, Patrick Charles Keely. 7)
The interior betrays the Protestant origins of the architecture of this ancient church all too well: it is merely a severely plain hall for preaching. The 1871 addition, however, besides extending the church, created a “Catholic“ sanctuary with a high altar surrounded by a semi-circular apse adorned with paintings now darkened with age. This sanctuary unusually features skylights to compensate for the lack of windows. A large plaque records benefactors – presumably of the 1871 addition – virtually all Irish. Old photographs indicate the decoration of the sanctuary has been drastically simplified. Eight) The communion rail and other statues and altars have disappeared.
Now, as in most Hispanic parishes, a world of devotions has sprung up in St. Mary’s. A host of statues and paintings of all kinds – some recent, some dating back to the now-distant age of the “Irish” – fill the church and serve to render this austere space Catholic. The two chapels to the side of the main altar are now crammed with yet more objects of devotion instead of side altars. Regardless of the source of the architecture, a visitor can make no mistake: this is a Catholic Church! And people can be found praying here at most times as well.
The special treasure of St. Mary’s, however, is its stained glass. Mostly by Mayer of Munich, these extraordinarily detailed and brilliantly colored windows are in a wonderful state of preservation. Is it not strange? – this parish of the poor has windows that can be matched by only one in a hundred of the parishes in the otherwise so much more (economically) fortunate Westchester or Fairfield counties.
So St. Mary’s still stands, ministering to the poor as it has during most of its long history. To visit this ancient parish is to return in spirit to those early days when Catholics, confronted by disease, poverty and even Nativist attack, somehow built their first churches and schools. They laid the foundations for the unparalleled growth of the Church in this region that continued for the next 130 years.
1. The Catholic Church in the United States of America, Vol. 3 at 345(New York, The Catholic Editing Company 1914)
2. John Gilmary Shea, 482 – 503, The Catholic Churches of New York City (New York, Lawrence G. Goulding & Co, 1878). The quotes and the content of the next four paragraphs are based on Shea’s account – which he seems to speak as an eyewitness.
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Mary’s_Church_(Manhattan); http://www.nycago.org/organs/nyc/html/StMaryRC.html both claim this on uncertain authority.
4. The Catholic Church in the United States of America, Vol. 3 at 347(New York, The Catholic Editing Company 1914); http://www.stmaryschurchles.com/events-calendar (Our History)
5. http://www.stmaryschurchles.com/events-calendar (Our History)
6. E. Willensky and Norval White, the AIA Guide to New York City at 87(3rd Edition, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York 1988); compare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Mary’s_Church_(Manhattan)
7. E. Willensky and Norval White, the AIA Guide to New York City at 87 (3rd Edition, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York 1988).
8. http://www.stmaryschurchles.com/events-calendar (Our History)
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