The Churches of New York XXXIV: Hidden Gems

Our Lady of Sorrows
101 Pitt Street

“Hidden gems” – thus did one of our readers describe some of the out–of-the-way churches of the city. There is no gem more hidden than Our Lady of Sorrows (originally, Our Lady of the Seven Dolors) in the heart of the Lower East Side. For Our Lady of Sorrows is one of the “Downtown churches” – like St. Theresa, St Mary, St. James – referred to disparagingly in the latest Archdiocesan history. For these parishes – at least until the last few years – remained churches of the poor, in neighborhoods inhabited by the least well – off immigrants – to the extent they were inhabited by a Catholic population at all. And like her sisters, Our Lady of Sorrows slipped out of the consciousness of the average New York Catholic. As we shall see that now may be changing….

Our Lady of Sorrows was originally a German ethnic parish – like the neighboring Most Holy Redeemer and the sadly no longer existing St. Nicholas. This was when this part of the Lower East Side was Kleindeutschland. Our Lady of Sorrows started from humble beginnings – in a barroom – what an omen given the present surroundings of the parish! The church was dedicated in 1868 and has remained in the care of the Capuchins from the beginning. Thereafter Our Lady of Sorrows only experienced a series of gradual additions and alterations until the Second Vatican Council. Paintings of the Seven Sorrows were installed in the dome by 1878.1) The sanctuary was enlarged after 1881. Around 1900, the galleries – other than the organ loft – were removed and rows of paintings substituted. It was only when the sanctuary was gutted in the aftermath of the council that drastic changes occurred. After the completion of the church a magnificent building had been erected in 1875 for the school – closed by the Archdiocese as recently as 2011.

The status of Our Lady of Sorrows as a “hidden gem” was secure already by 1901 when, in a more than usually inaccurate article, the New York Times opined:

“There is also a remarkable church, remarkable for the spaciousness and gorgeousness of its interior in such a region, St. Aloysius (sic) in Pitt street, attached to the Capuchin monastery at Pitt and Stanton. How many readers of this paper know that there is such an institution in New York as a monastery of barefooted Capuchin friars? This church holds its services in German, and it is a curious testimony to the changing conditions of its neighborhood that the authorities report that its congregation has sadly fallen off of late years by reason of the migration of its parishioners.” 2)

As the above quotation indicates, by 1910 the German population was rapidly leaving and this neighborhood was in the process of becoming very heavily Jewish. A description of the parish in 1914 lets us sense the difficult transition taking place as a result of this true “demographic change” – the teaching staff of the school had to be reduced because of drastically decreasing enrollment. Yet the hundreds of Italian families who were then also settling in this part of the Lower East Side saved the parish. Our Lady of Sorrows was transformed from a German into an Italian ethnic parish. 3) After the Second World War, the neighborhood changed again and became “Hispanic” – and even poorer than before.

The facade of Our Lady of Sorrows is an extraordinary Victorian fantasy of various architectural elements in a bold red and white color scheme. The visitor is thus totally unprepared for the interior: a rectangular space dominated by a vast blue dome crowned by a cupola. At the time of its building this was the largest dome in New York City. Strange – while Roman Catholics of that era had rushed to embrace the Gothic as the preeminent sacred style, here at Our Lady of Sorrows a neoclassical interior was built. A huge circle inscribed in a rectangle – the light, spacious and harmonious interior of Our Lady of Sorrows is in some respects more perfectly neoclassical than the actual churches of that style built 30 years earlier! At the time of its construction the church building, designed by Henry Engelbert, was considered to be in the “Byzantine” style – probably meaning then anything with a dome. 4)

A generous selection of statues lets one know this is a Catholic church. Otherwise the relics of bygone eras are relatively scarce. No dedications or inscriptions remind us of the German past – and not much more witnesses to the succeeding Italian era. Unusually for a Catholic church the windows are all non-figurative. This was obviously a parish that did not dispose of vast resources. Yet certain details – such as the relief over the entrance, the paintings in the dome and the capitals of the columns – are very fine. And then there is the splendid pieta in the sanctuary – a gift of King Louis (Ludwig) II of Bavaria, the great patron of Wagner and builder of Neuschwanstein! 5)

After the Second Vatican Council the sanctuary was cleared out and the old reredos destroyed. Only the Pieta – and perhaps some of the other statuary – survived that. The present pastor, Fr. Thomas Faiola– with the aid of a generous donation by the family of former parishioners who had been married here , was able to erect a new reredos incorporating the saved elements. Moreover, “Father Tom” was able to return the tabernacle to the center of the reredos to serve as a focus of the entire church – as originally intended by the architect.

Directly across the street – public housing.

The scene 2 blocks in the other direction.

The Madonna on the facade of the school.

The new reredos.

The Pieta donated by the king of Bavaria.

Father Tom describes the current situation of his still very active parish. It is based on the foundation of the faith of Hispanic residents of the neighborhood – in the face of trying economic circumstances – and on the loyalty of the former Italian parishioners – and their descendants – who continue to support Our Lady of Sorrows even if living outside the parish boundaries. Then, in recent years there has been an entirely new development: gentrification. No longer do poor immigrants head for the Lower East Side – instead, within a couple of blocks of the church, one finds the densest concentration of bars in New York and apartments renting for as much as $4,000 a month. These new neighbors as a rule don’t seek out Our Lady of Sorrows. So Father Tom is going out to meet them and make their acquaintance. It is an example of evangelization that should be much more widely practiced in New York City than it currently is. For we otherwise fear that the Catholic presence in Manhattan, which has survived so many hardships both of the very early years and of the general crisis after 1965, should now succumb to the wave of prosperity now swamping almost every part of the island.

1) Shea, John Gilmary, The Catholic Churches of New York City at 557 -559 (Lawrence G. Goulding & Co, New York, 1914);

2) Centres of Civilization: On the Lower East Side of New York,The New York Times, July 21, 1901

3) The Catholic Church in the United States of America: Volume 3 at 361(Catholic Editing Company, New York, 1914)

4) Shea, John Gilmary, The Catholic Churches of New York City at 557 (Lawrence G. Goulding & Co, New York, 1914);
http://www.nycago.org/Organs/NYC/html/OurLadySorrows.html
(Engelbert was the architect of the similarly unclassifiable Holy Cross church on West 42nd Street.)

5) Shea, John Gilmary, op. cit. at 557