The End of the Churches II: Catholic “Relics”

Last year The New York Times featured an article on the Archdiocese’s disposition of the contents of closed New York Churches:

Gill, John Freeman, “These Churches Have Been Closed, but Their Artifacts Live On,” Tne New York Times, December 24, 2021 (1)

IN this report we encounter “artifacts” (the reporter’s term) from several churches on which we ourselves have reported over the years. We provide links to the relevant articles.

First, St. Lucy’s in East Harlem:

“This is my last Mother Cabrini,” Mr. Amatrudo (the manager of the warehouse)said, resting his palm on the head of a waist-high plaster statue of the canonized Italian-American nun Frances Xavier Cabrini, rescued from St. Lucy’s Church in East Harlem after the church’s deconsecration in 2017.

(Above) This statue of the pieta was in the Church of St. Lucy in East Harlem (photo taken December 2014); (below) a pieta identified in the article as having been removed from St. Lucy’s in the Archdiocesan “Patrimony Warehouse” in December 2021 ( but repainted? or with a newer overpainting stripped off?).

Then, there is the grandiose former parish of All Saints, Harlem:

“Two of the most striking items in the warehouse are a pair of white-marble angels that once flanked the high altar at the Church of All Saints, on Madison Avenue and 129th Street. The splendid Italian Gothic Revival-style church, built starting in the 1880s after designs by the architect James Renwick Jr., is sometimes called the St. Patrick’s of Harlem — a reference to St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, which Mr. Renwick also designed. All Saints is a city landmark, a designation that protects its exterior, but not its interior.”

All Saints was deconsecrated in 2017

“Workers disassembled the great marble altar with power saws fitted with masonry blades. To reach the clerestory windows high above the pews, some four stories of scaffolding were erected inside the church, and most of the stained-glass windows were taken out — over the objections of preservationists — and replaced with clear glass. The city Landmarks Preservation Commission approved the removal of stained glass and exterior sculptural masonry associated with religious imagery.“

“The altar and stained glass now reside in the warehouse. The 16-foot-high gilded crucifix is stored in crated sections, Jesus lying akimbo in the garage.”

“The church’s richly carved pews, among the city’s most elaborate, went to a church in Chicago. And marble statues of Joseph and Mary landed in Bridgeport, Conn. (The All Saints complex, which includes an attached parish school and parish house, was sold in March for $10.85 million to the developer CSC Coliving. A modernization of the school and conversion of the church into a school auditorium, designed by Tang Studio Architect, is underway, and the Capital Preparatory Harlem Charter School plans to move into the two buildings next fall on a long-term lease.)”

(Above) The crucifix high above the main altar of All Saints (photo taken 2012): (below) as packed away in the warehouse (December 2021 photo).

Then, there is the parish of St Thomas the Apostle, Harlem:

“In 2008, some 30 stained-glass windows from the imposing neo-Gothic Church of St. Thomas the Apostle on West 118th Street in Harlem, designed by the Mayer of Munich studio in Germany, were removed and reconditioned after a preservation campaign failed. Those windows were later installed upstate, in the new Saint Kateri Tekakwitha Church, in LaGrangeville. Other windows went to St. Brigid’s Church in the East Village. And last year, 14 smaller windows from St. Thomas depicting angels were shipped to a church in Taiwan. (As for the 1907 church complex of St. Thomas the Apostle, it was sold to Artimus Construction for $6 million in 2012; the church was truncated, and its remaining front portion now serves as a vaulted event space called Harlem Parish.)”

Mr Zwilling, the Archdiocesan spokesman, repeats mantra-like, everything he has been saying for years:

“Our churches, beautiful as they are, are not built as museums — they’re built to serve the spiritual, the pastoral, the faith needs of the community,”

Mr. Zwilling does not explain why the closing of parishes (and schools, and Catholic residences) has to be repeated again and again. Nor does he enumerate the “spritual, pastoral and faith benefits” so far achieved by Making all Things New (the last big restucturing push). The Times reporter is not inclined to press him on such things. Nor does he comment on the apparently disproportionate impact of these closures on the churches of Harlem (and, I should add, of other poorer areas of the city). The reporter duly notes on the margin the objections of preservationists (he doesn’t mention the parishioners). But what significance do their views have? After all, according To Mr. Zwilling, the works of art assembled (in “museums”) over generations are:

“artifacts that ‘help tell the story of the history of a church that is important to people who, back when the church was being built, contributed either monetarily or through their labor…’”

Yes, these “historical artifacts” were once important to those people who built these churches – but no longer are to us. In this manner, the great artistic heritage of the Catholic people of New York is appropriated by the Archdiocese and scattered all over the world.

1. Just in time for Christmas!