The Churches of New York XLIII: The Plain Sister

St. Catherine of Genoa
506 West 153rd Street

Just a year earlier than his fairy-tale masterpiece of Our Lady of Good Counsel on East 90th Street (built 1890-92), architect Thomas Poole had built a second, very similar Catholic church on the West Side – but much further north. St Catherine of Genoa church offers us a unique insight into the architect’s creative development.

The parish of St Catherine (originally “Catharine”) of Genoa was what was then the far north of the city in 1887. The church was commenced and completed in 1889. It was one of a number of churches of various denominations that sprang up around the cemetery of Trinity Church – above all Goodhue’s Anglican church of the Intercession. It was a modest parish from the beginning with a modest church. It is claimed that the existing church building was intended to be temporary only – but in fact was never replaced.

The façade of St Catherine of Genoa is quite similar to its cross town sister, but less elaborate, smaller in scale and built of red brick instead of stone. It is a mixture of Flemish secular architecture and Late Gothic elements such as the windows. Curiously, the church looks out over the undeveloped grounds of the cemetery – just as Our Lady of Good Counsel presided over low-lying commercial buildings until the 1970’s.

If St Catherine of Genoa’s façade is modest, the interior is downright plain. In contrast to the unorthodox blueprint of Our Lady of Good Counsel, Poole’s St Catherine of Genoa has a much more traditional layout. In form it is just a simple rectangular space oriented towards the south. The architecture strikes a more original note in the fine ceiling with its elaborate beams.

We doubt the decorative scheme was very elaborate even in the early decades. And whatever did exist has mostly fallen victim to a thorough post – Conciliar house cleaning. But every church of that era, however humble, had at least one striking feature. In the case of St Catherine it is the series of skylights: unique stained glass windows narrating the life of St Catherine of Genoa. It is a creative solution to the problem of tightly adjoining buildings, which so often in New York plunge magnificent stained glass windows into eternal darkness.

St Catherine of Genoa was always a small parish – and not very well off. As time went on, the original Irish population left. This part of New York became overwhelmingly “Hispanic” after the Second World War. The parish now serves a wide variety of nationalities. The parochial school was closed a few years ago and the parish itself seemed to be on the Archdiocesan hit list. However, there may have been second thoughts about that. So for the time being St. Catherine of Genoa continues its humble service of over 125 years. That service has included hosting the Traditional mass in 2012 – for the first time since the 1960’s.