Our Lady of Esperanza
624 West 156th Street
The Church and Art – at this point in history it would seem that the two are mutually exclusive. Most of the art commissioned today under Church patronage is either outright junk or, even worse, an attempted accommodation with “modern art” – even in its increasingly blasphemous form. This situation has prevailed for decades now and certainly antedates the Council. Consider right here in New York: the Rockefellers re-erect in the 1930’s a magnificent cloister celebrating all aspects of medieval Catholic art – while only two decades later and a short stroll away the Catholic Church constructs a shrine to a great saint, Mother Cabrini, evidencing an entirely antithetical artistic sensibility. And then the Council and its aftermath call into question the very existence of a role for art in the Church – the term “aesthetic” takes on a derogatory connotation in post-Conciliar church-speak. Yet it was not always so – quite the contrary. Consider the church of Our Lady of Esperanza: begun in 1906 as an adjunct of a spectacular art museum!
In 1904 the fabulously wealthy railway heir Mr. Archer Milton Huntington began the construction of a grand museum for the arts of Spain. Constructed on Audubon Terrace in the Northern end of Manhattan, the museum of the Hispanic Society of America served as the anchor of a whole series of institutions dedicated to the arts and sciences housed in miniature Beaux-Arts palaces and arranged around a series of plazas.
Now Mr. Huntington had the insight – obvious but alien to the present cultural elite – that the religion of the Spanish people must be a part of any presentation of Iberian culture. So as an integral part of the complex he donated the land and helped fund the construction of a second Catholic parish for the care of the Spanish – speaking people of New York. (The first such parish was the tiny Our Lady of Guadalupe on West 14th street – recently and unfortunately closed). 1) Our Lady of Esperanza was duly commenced in 1909 and completed the following year. The architect was Charles Huntington, the nephew of Archer Huntington. A Spanish lady, Miss De Barril, was a generous donor; King Alfonso XIII of Spain contributed the magnificent sanctuary lamp. The list of wealthy and socially prominent donors – not all of them Catholic – included JP Morgan. 2)
We should reflect in particular on the generosity of the Spanish benefactors. For only a few years before, in 1898, the US had waged a war against a helpless Spain that had been demonized in the popular press. Celebrated as a “splendid little war” on these shores and then the quickly forgotten, in Spain the Spanish –American War had a traumatic effect on culture and intellectual life – the final exit from the imperial dream. Yet here a few years later was a church – and a museum – unashamedly celebrating the history and culture of Spain. And does it not remind us of the circumstances of the founding of the first Catholic church in New York, St. Peter’s, in 1784? The generosity of an earlier Spanish king was crucial in establishing that parish – at a time when the new United States were small and weak and the Spanish empire still powerful.
Our Lady of Esperanza was an extraordinary affair – a small temple reached by a dramatic stairway. It was like a return to the neoclassical temples of the 1830’s and 40’s – a form of church architecture so scorned later in the Victorian period. But this would not last long. Construction resumed in the 1920’s. Our Lady of Esperanza was simply too small. A large addition was added to the front designed by the son of Stanford White. As in the case of many other New York churches it provided additional room for a rectory above the sanctuary. The first pastor of this parish in 1911, Father Buisson, was a member of the French order that had the care of Our Lady of Guadalupe where he had been pastor, His order had helped fund the construction of Our Lady of Esperanza. – and he remained until 1952! 3)
The original exterior of the church.
Although built contemporaneously with the Audubon Terrace complex the church is now not accessible from it. Rather, the visitor has to enter on West 156th street – in the shadow of some nondescript apartment buildings and well below the level of the Museum plaza. Our Lady of Esperanza, as expanded in 1924, presents a somewhat forbidding exterior– the high, block like structure with relatively few windows prompts unwelcome comparisons with a masonic lodge. But the decorative details and statuary are very fine. Inside one has to ascend to the level of the church through a double staircase. Already in 1924 an elevator was provided – an early instance of “accessibility.”
St. Rose of Lima (?)
St. Theresa of Avila
Miss de Barril was a major benefactor of this church.
On arrival at the level of the church proper, and after proceeding through small vestibule, the visitor enters the nave. It is small church, really a chapel, in a Roman-Renaissance style. The furnishings – the main altar, the statues, the windows and the metalwork are of superb quality – consistent with the extraordinarily high level of accomplishment in Catholic church architecture between 1890 and 1920. Most remarkable are the elaborate amber-colored skylights – necessary because of the paucity of windows – displaying various Divine emblems and the coats of arms of the main sees of Spain. The only discordant notes are two not totally successful side altars and even more so the post-conciliar near wrecking of the sanctuary.
St Augustine and St Monica (above and below). The window, like another in St. Monica church, is based on an 1846 painting by Ary Scheffer.
This extraordinary hand carved statue of Our Lady of Cobre – patroness of Cuba – was created in Spain in 1916, blessed in Cuba, and installed here in 1920.
One of the amazing skylights full of symbols familiar and exotic.
King Alfonso’s sanctuary lamp.
It is curious that this church, conceived of as a missionary enterprise for a small community, should find itself in a neighborhood until recently almost entirely Hispanic. But I wonder what the current Spanish speaking Catholic community knows of this architectural gem – constructed when the links of the Catholic Church in New York both to the leading lights of contemporary art and even to “high society” were obviously much stronger than today. And what does the average New York Catholic know of the glorious past of his culture – which non-Catholics undertook to celebrate a mere hundred years ago? For at Our Lady of Esperanza -not in the Middle Ages but in that most modern city of New York – a Catholicism, conscious of its nationality, art and traditions, was able to connect and communicate with the culture and the (non-Catholic) society of that era with a success that eludes the Church of today.
Our Lady of Hope – with her anchor.
1. It is claimed the idea of this church was suggested to Mr. Huntington by Senora Dona Manuela de Laverrerie de Barril, wife of the Spanish Consul-General in New York, who died before construction began. http://www.harlemonestop.com/organization.php?id=347
Miss de Barril – presumably her daughter – was a major donor to the church.
2. The Catholic Church in the United States of America: Volume 3 at 355, 357 (photograph)(Catholic Editing Company, New York, 1914)
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Our_Lady_of_Esperanza
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