Demolition of Mary Help of Christians begins (Photo from Ginsburg’s old apartment by Daniel Maurer)
No sooner had we reported on the impending fate of Mary Help of Christians in New York than the scaffolding goes up to implement the razing of the church.
One very unlikely source, however, was impressed by the role of this parish in a very tough time for this neighborhood. According to Daniel Maurer:
I imagine that view – and the cheap rent, of course – was part of what kept Ginsberg on the block during its darkest days. In “Notebook: 1983-1984,” he wrote about summer on East 12th: “the heat smog humidity stench and sulfur color of sky and street dust gave me to think I was living in Hell City – the inhabitants violently inclined to each other on my street.”
He described a heroin shop, a cigarette smuggling storehouse, a stolen car ring, and an abandoned garage from which someone shot him in the arm with a BB gun. But in the middle of the block’s madness was Mary Help of Christians, where “Sunday mornings a crowd dress’t in white and fresh lace Sunday pants and hats goes up & down the church’s front steps into the big wooden doors.”
http://bedfordandbowery.com/2013/07/looks-like-its-time-to-give-up-allen-ginsbergs-old-apartment/
For another report see here (with pictures).
More photos from today: how to demolish a church.
The end of the school (from the rear).
The statue of Our Lady is already gone.
As in many New York churches only the facade was “finished” in stone.
A view you could never have had from the building of the church until now: the rectory has already been torn down.
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