The Churches of New York XXXVI: Losses III

The church of St.Nicholas in 1878 (Shea, “The Catholic Churches of New York City”)

Over the years not a few Catholic churches of New York have fallen victim to the wrecker. There have been “natural” causes: fires have claimed many an old church – from Old St. Patrick’s cathedral in the 1860’s to St Agnes in recent years (of course, both of these were rebuilt). In the now distant past, old churches frequently were torn down and replaced as parishes expanded. The construction of the network of railroads, highways, tunnels and bridges in and around New York from the 1900 though the 1950’s took a toll of a number of New York Catholic parishes – and these were not necessarily replaced.

This statue of St. Clare, located in the Church of St. Cyril and Methodius, is virtually all that remains of the parish of St. Clare or Santa Chiara, located on 436 West 36th Street. St Clare’s was an Italian national parish, founded in 1903, and closed in the late 1930’s because of the construction of the Lincoln tunnel. The parish church, completed in 1907, was a small baroque gem created by the architect of St. Jean Baptiste. !)

The Church of St. Clare. 2)

In some cases churches – often ethnic parishes – were abandoned when their congregations acquired or built bigger and better churches:

This structure on 345 East 4th Street is the original home of the parish of St Elizabeth of Hungary. It was founded by Slovakian immigrants (from the Kingdom of Hungary) in 1891, and this, their first church, was finished in 1892. Later, the parishes of St.John Nepomucene and St Stephen of Hungary were formed from this parish. In 1917 St. Elizabeth of Hungary parish moved to the present beautiful church on East 83rd Street, as Yorkville had become the new center of Central European peoples in New York. Now the original church is the “Church of St. Idsidro Y Leandro – Western Orthodox Catholic Church of the Hispanic Mozarabic Rite.” 3)

The original cornerstone.

Until recent times, however, it was highly unusual that a Catholic parish simply would be closed without any successor for no other reason than the decline in the size of the parish – that there was no longer a need for the church. Certain parishes, usually ethnic, seem to have vanished at various times. But what appears to be the first well-documented instance of such a closure was the fate in 1960 of St. Nicholas, one of the most historic parishes in New York, formerly located at 127 East 2nd Street.

This impressive Neo-Gothic structure, so incongruous in the architectural wasteland that surrounds it, is the former rectory of the German Catholic Church of St Nicholas. St Nicholas was organized in 1833 as the first German parish of New York. The rapidly expanding parish acquired a fine new Gothic revival building, similar to the nearby church of St Bridget, in 1848. St. John Neumann celebrated his first mass in 1836 at this parish (in the earlier church). Towards the end of the 19th century there was a lavish redecoration of the interior and the imposing rectory followed in 1903.

As in the case of several other downtown churches (e.g., St Mary’s), urban renewal has left a wasteland around the former rectory of St. Nicholas.

As time went on, however, St. Nicholas suffered from the competition of the much larger and more magnificent German parish of the Most Holy Redeemer – located only three blocks away and the tower of which is visible from the site of St. Nicholas. Then, well before the First World War, the German population deserted the neighborhood for Yorkville and elsewhere. By the 1930’s the congregation was tiny. In 1960 Cardinal Spellman closed St. Nicholas and had the church razed. In exchange the Cardinal erected next to the former rectory a kind of neighborhood center (where a former parochial school had stood?). 4) It was an ominous sign for the future.

There could be no question of Archdiocesan real estate speculation in this neighborhood in 1960 – a parking lot marks the site of St. Nicholas to the present day.

The gray area on the side of the rectory is the”ghost” of the destroyed church (above and below). A small fragment from the facade of St Nicholas also remains affixed to the side of the rectory

What had been an exception has become more frequent in recent decades. This statue in the “park” adjoining the church of St Anthony of Padua on Houston Street is all that remains of the Church of St. Alphonsus Liguori(below). It was originally a German parish, founded in 1847 by the Redemptorists. The parish church, built in 1870-72, received rave reviews at the time, especially for the magnificent altar imported from Munich. The church supposedly developed structural problems due to an underground stream and was demolished in 1980. Is this statue the same that is mentioned and shown in an early account as presiding from the gable of the old church? 4A)

St. Alphonsus Ligouri in 1878 (Shea, “The Catholic Churches of New York City”)

We conclude with St. Clare again – the facade of the former hospital of St. Clare on West 51st Street. If there have been painful losses among the churches of New York City and far more drastic reductions in Catholic schools, the general care hospitals of the Archdiocese have been entirely eliminated. As recently as 1998 the struggling St. Clare’s was rescued through the personal intervention and efforts of Cardinal O’Connor – by 2007 it was closed. 5)

1)http://www.nycago.org/organs/nyc/html/StClareRC.html; David W. Dunlap, From Abyssinian to Zion: A Guide to Manhattan’s Houses of Worship at 198 ( Columbia University Press, New York, 2004)

2)http://www.nycago.org/organs/nyc/html/StClareRC.html

3) Dunlop, op. cit. at 209.

4) The online resources for this historic but long-vanished church exceed in quality and quantity those available for many existing parishes. http://www.nycago.org/Organs/NYC/html/StNicholasRC.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Nicholas_Kirche_(New_York_City);
http://www.stnicholascenter.org/galleries/gazetteer/2485/6/ (many pictures including the interior);
http://gvshp.org/blog/2012/04/12/135-east-2nd-street-then-now/ (clarifying the date of the rectory – which should have been obvious from its style and early pictures)

4A) Shea, John Gilmary, The Catholic Churches of New York City at 128 (Lawrence G. Goulding & Co., New York, 1878)

5) Martin, Julia, A Phoenix, Catholic New York, April 23, 1998;
Sulmasy, Daniel P., Then There was One: the Unravelling of Catholic health Care, America, March 16 2009.

(St. Vincent’s Hospital itself closed shortly after this article was written)