The Churches of New York XCI: The Country, the City and a Hint of the Suburbs

St. Elizabeth Church, 268 Wadsworth Avenue

Washington Heights is one of the last outposts of Manhattan – more distant from what people commonly imagine New York City to be than many parts of Brooklyn, Queens, or the Bronx.  Here, at this northernmost tip of Manhattan island, is St Elizabeth’s church.  It presents a formidable appearance, like a medieval fortress.  The somewhat streamlined Gothic exterior of the church is executed in rough gray stone and is surmounted by a prominent corner tower. Like many of its sister churches in these far-northern regions, St Elisabeth’s enjoys an impressive site: set on a ridge at the corner of an intersection, the church dominates its surroundings.

We are fortunate to have a detailed account of the early days of the parish from Msgr. Henry Brann, the pastor of St. Elizabeth’s from 1870 to 1890. He had studied at St Sulpice and at the American college in Rome; he founded a number of parishes and was the author of all kinds of literary, philosophical and apologetic works (including the translation from the French of a “very severe work” on dancing). 1) St. Elizabeth’s was founded in 1869, much earlier than the otherwise very similar neighboring parish of the Incarnation to the south.  At that time Washington Heights (or “Fort Washington”) was a rural outpost of farms and estates. The Catholic population was sparse. It was Msgr Brann who built a new church for St Elizabeth’s parish (begun in 1871, dedicated in 1872) at the same time he was building up the parish of St. John’s in Kingsbridge (Bronx) (founded in 1877). 2)

The church was named after Elizabeth Fisher, the wife of Joseph Fisher, donor of the land upon which the church was built. It was the proprietor of another of the Washington Heights estates – James Gordon Bennett, newspaper pioneer and owner of the New York Herald – who donated the land upon which the rectory of the first St. Elizabeth’s church was built as well as five thousand dollars. Mr. Bennett had embraced – or perhaps returned to – Catholicism in his old age. Other well-to-do contributors were involved, including Mr. Bennett’s then famous son, James Gordon, who gave a reproduction of Murillo’s “Immaculate Conception.”  The prominent Catholic and lawyer Charles O’Conor gave ten thousand dollars.  St. Elizabeth thus was one of the first (but not the last) Catholic churches in New York that was founded and financed primarily by private individuals – including non-Catholics. 3) The architect was the well-known Napoleon LeBrun, whose New York City works include St. John’s (near Penn Station) and St. Ann (destroyed).

Msgr Brann vividly describes isolated Washington Heights at time of the founding of the parish – its country estates and “palatial” mansions, its local notables and its fine schools – a world “gone with the wind.” The extent of the removal from New York City is hardly imaginable today:

It would be impossible to find a pleasanter place in which to enjoy the beauties of Nature, to study metaphysics, to write poetry or to become a contemplative and a mystic. 4)

Yet by the time Msgr Brann left the parish for St Agnes church (1890), the wealthy classes had all left, trolley cars had established a public transportation connection with the south and the absorption of Washington Heights into the City had commenced.

The first St. Elizabeth’s must have been a pretty Victorian Gothic edifice, with its stained glass, marble altars and reproductions of famous paintings – John Gilmary Shea described it as “elegant,” “tasteful” and “beautiful.”  In 1925 this first church burned down. The present grand structure dates from 1929. By that time St Elizabeth’s had become a typical large Irish – American city parish.

We have found little information on the construction of the new church. This seems odd, for St. Elizabeth boasts more dedicatory plaques and episcopal coats-of-arms than almost any other Catholic church in New York – exceeded in this respect only by the two cathedrals of St. Patrick as well as the politically and historically prominent parishes of Holy Family and Old St Peter’s. In St Elizabeth’s case, an uninformative parish history from 1970 describes the 1869-72 founding in detail but says very little about the parish church that stands today. 5)

The vast interior is one huge rectangular space. Although featuring Gothic decoration, this church otherwise exemplifies an eclectic style gaining traction at that time in Catholic Church architecture, especially in the emerging suburbs: a kind of toned-down modernism. 

In the tradition of a great New York City parishes, however, is St. Elisabeth’s lavish decorative program of marble altars, statues and paintings. Above all there is a glorious set of German stained-glass. On display in St. Elizabeth’s is a last flowering of the art of the stained-glass studios of Munich and Innsbruck, which had decorated so many Catholic churches all over the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  These German studios were inspired by late medieval and early renaissance glass – with their bold colors, large-scale figures derived from the paintings of that period, and elaborate architectural crowns.  If you visit many of these old churches, you will begin to note the recurring use of the same designs. Yet other windows – like those of St. Elizabeth above the high altar of this church – seem to have been special orders.

St. Elizabeth remains an active parish with a still functioning
school. Like Incarnation to the south, this once Irish parish has for many years been almost completely “Hispanic.” On a recent visit, the main Sunday morning Spanish Mass was well attended and cacophonous; the English language Mass that followed was attended by a small congregation and accompanied by dispiriting organ music. 

Will this situation change as Washington Heights continues to “gentrify,” becoming a refuge for those (like teachers and musicians) priced out of the Upper West Side? In other parishes a similar demographic development has not necessarily been beneficial. Moreover, it seems that not all aspects of St. Elizabeth’s structure are in the best order: water damage is visible, birds fly about the interior. We can only speculate on the long-term developments of this parish which, like many in New York City, has survived such incredible changes in the generations since its founding.

1. Shea, John Gilmary; The Catholic Churches of New York City, 271-72 (New York, Lawrence G. Goulding &Co 1878)
2. Shea, Ibid., at 264-69.
3. Brann, Msgr Henry A.; A Few Chapters in the Church History of the Northwest Part of New York City, United States Catholic Historical Society, Historical Records and Studies Vol VI, Part 1, p. 58 (New York, The United States Catholic Historical Society 1911)
4. Brann, Ibid.
5. St. Elizabeth Church (Custom Book, Inc., South Hackensack, 1970)
6. Ibid.