The Churches of New York XLVII: The End of the Age of Spellman

Church of the Epiphany

373 Second Avenue at East 22^nd Street

 

1967 – the last year of Cardinal Spellman’s reign in New York – must have been bewildering for the aging prelate. The political and media establishments, which had celebrated him during the Second World War, now excoriated the Cardinal when he expressed the same hopes for victory in Vietnam.  Obscene caricatures of the Cardinal circulated freely. Within the Church, the situation was no better. The flight of the Catholic population to the suburbs was in full swing; crime and poverty were overtaking parish after parish in New York City. Nuns were demonstrating and radical priests mobilizing. It seemed that all the structures so carefully built up since Archbishop Hughes’s days were now unraveling.

 

It was at this time that Cardinal Spellman dedicated his last church on the island of Manhattan: Epiphany on May 14, 1967.

 

Epiphany is actually one of the older parishes in New York. Founded in 1868 to relieve overcrowding at St. Ann’s, St Stephen’s and St Francis Xavier, the parish acquired a magnificent church built in 1869-70 by that distinguished architect Napoleon LeBrun – executed in a North Italian or “Lombard” style including a tower and steeple.  Apparently the first pastor specified this style.  Epiphany indeed flourished under its remarkable founding pastor, Fr. Richard Lalor Burtsell, a distinguished leader of the New York clergy after the Civil War.  Fr. Burtsell later came into conflict with Archbishop Corrigan over his forceful advocacy on behalf of his friend, Fr. McGlynn of St Stephen’s. The result was his exile in 1890 to Rondout (part of Kingston), Ulster County (where, however, Fr. Burtsell subsequently seems to have enjoyed a distinguished ecclesiastical career).  After this initial brush with notoriety, Epiphany settled into the normal patterns of New York parish life, although the parish population already was declining in 1913. 1)

 

Regrettably the historic church was destroyed by fire on December 20, 1963.  A friend who at the time was parishioner of Epiphany and who lived in an adjoining apartment building told me of the chaos of that night  – of the noise, confusion and of the frozen water everywhere in the middle of winter.

 

Now Cardinal Spellman seized the opportunity not just to restore what had been destroyed but to create something new. The Council was at that time in the midst of its deliberations. What better way to show one’s adherence to the new spirit than to create a radically new space? For Spellman, ever the would-be conformist, the temptation was irresistible. Epiphany would be the first full-blown modern church built in Manhattan. (The NYU chapel was not a parish and Holy Family church remained a foolish hybrid). The new church was completed and consecrated in 1967.

 

What kind of church is this? The approach on Second Avenue headed south leads the visitor through some of the ugliest streetscapes of New York. And although Epiphany occupies a prominent corner lot, it is easy to walk past without realizing anything significant is there at all.  Next, there appears a random assemblage of shapes and curves executed in dark brick. On closer scrutiny, the visitor can make out a stylized steeple with cross – this must be a church, then.  The contrast could not be greater with earlier parish churches  – such as the original building of Epiphany – that by their very form proudly proclaimed the Catholic faith in the midst of the metropolis.  Before the entrance is a garden with a strange sunburst sculpture commemorating the victims of 9/11.  From its metal framework, disembodied hands reach out….

(Above) Hands emerge from under the wreckage; (below) the “starburst.”

 

Inside there is a spacious narthex dominated by a massive white stone head of Christ – almost reminiscent of Easter Island sculpture. We also find here the baptismal font. At this early period of the liturgical revolution, although many forms were changing, some elements of the past – such as locating the baptistery outside the main space of the church – still remained intact and, for some reason, were never subsequently changed.

(Above) This modern window in the narthex incorporates a center section from the old church made by Mayer of Munich (below).

 

The main space of the church – we cannot speak of a ”nave” or “sanctuary”  – does surprise in its scale. Whereas traditional architecture often suggests to the visitor a scale larger than a building’s actual dimensions, in Epiphany the reverse is achieved; the exterior does not convey at all the spaciousness of the interior. It is one long, quasi-rectangular space, in which the altar is set against one of the longer sides. This arrangement, unusual if not unprecedented in prior Catholic churches, suggests a circular space surrounded by the congregation.  The altar, tabernacle and lecterns are not separated from the seating of the congregation by a rail nor are they raised significantly above the floor level.  So at Epiphany a new understanding of the liturgy is made manifest  – before the textual changes of the Novus Ordo.  This is essentially the same layout that would be repeated in a few years at the parishes of St. John and Nativity (the latter almost a copy of Epiphany on a much smaller scale and employing grossly limited financial resources).

To the uninitiated visitor, the organ and other musical paraphernalia must appear equal or superior in significance to the tabernacle – or even the altar.

 

Epiphany is indeed spacious – but other aspects are less attractive. As always, this kind of architecture is more reminiscent of the secular than the sacred: perhaps an atrium-like lobby of a large hotel. The hanging lighting fixtures, gray brick walls and abstract windows create a cold, colorless, commercial or industrial atmosphere. On closer examination, the walls, which had appeared to be the smooth sides of a rectangle, bulge in and out at irregular intervals. The confused visitor may think of Cthulhu’s great city, where “ the geometry …he saw was abnormal… where a second glance shewed concavity after the first shewed convexity.” 1)

 

Now, as always in such churches, there are images of the saints and of the Virgin in a traditional style.  At Epiphany they are conveniently collected at the two short sides of the “rectangle.”  Some are quite beautiful and elegant:  an icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, a statue of Our Lady of the Pillar (a Spanish devotion) and an image, apparently executed in Viennese petit point, of the adoration of the Three Kings (the patronal feast of this parish).  Regrettably, the objects are so small in relation to the size of this church that they make little impression.

(Above and below) The “saints’ corner” has become a fixture of postconciliar church design, where “traditional” images of the saints are massed, usually in a less-than-prominent spot, “for those who care.”

 

Obviously there have been over the years some well-to-do members of this parish. Epiphany has indeed survived better than most of its sister Manhattan parishes – it seems that a Catholic population has held on longer here near the hospitals, Gramercy park and associated streets. The school still exists and has even expanded to take in the building of St. Stephen’s school – although the Sisters of Charity departed in 1978, to be replaced by an all-lay staff. It appears too that a renewed commitment to Catholic values may have taken place – I noticed, on a recent visit, pro-life materials prominently on display. That’s quite a shift from the views encountered in some publications here in the 1980’s. It seems, however, that Epiphany has not been immune from the difficulties facing the Archdiocese. According to the August 18, 2013 parish bulletin, the number of full-time priests has been reduced from 3 to 2 and the number of masses curtailed – financial constraints were among the considerations behind these moves.

 

In the grand scheme of things, however, the attempt of Spellman to jump on the bandwagon of architectural modernism  – implicitly repudiating much of what he himself had seemed to stand for – failed miserably. Instead of being a herald of future, Epiphany church remains an isolated monument to a specific moment of the past.  Epiphany may well be: “The most positive modern religious statement on Manhattan Island to date,” 1) yet “it does not wholly compensate for the loss of the original Church of the Epiphany of Our Lord.” 2)  Whatever its merits, the church of the Epiphany in no way functions as a visible religious or architectural focus for the neighborhood  – something its 19^th century predecessor – just one of a whole series of churches erected at that time – so easily accomplished.  Strange – the movement that would open the Church to the world instead sets up a monument both establishing conformity to external artistic norms and commemorating the withdrawal of the Church to the status of a private cult. Within a few years of Epiphany’s completion the Archdiocese in Manhattan was fighting for survival, not advancing into the new frontier of modernity.

 

1)   The Catholic Church in the United States of America, Vol. 3 at 324 -325. (New York, The Catholic Editing Company, 1914)

2)   Lovecraft, H.P., The Call of Cthulhu in The Dunwich Horror and Others at 151 (Arkham House Publishers, Inc., Sauk City, 1963)

3)   Wollensky, E. and White, N. , AIA Guide to New York City at 203 (3rd edition 1988, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York)

4)Dunlap, D., From Abyssinian to Zion at 65 (Columbia University Press, New York 2004)