Having some friends in the Prospect Heights area of Brooklyn, I have driven Atlantic Avenue fairly often, the road which connects that part of Brooklyn with Richmond Hill in Queens. One day there was some work being done on the road, and I was detoured onto the streets of East New York, where I drove past an astonishing church, a little piece of Rome dropped onto a New York streetcorner: it had a perfect Renaissance facade, with an impressive Latin inscription (D O M ET B M V LAVRETANAE) and it was crumbling away as if it had been there for five hundred years. I was late for my appointment and kept rolling. I went back to look for it, but I had misremembered the routing of the detour – I was looking on the north side of Atlantic Avenue. This past weekend when driving to Grand Army Plaza my eyes wandered as I passed along a section of Atlantic on a viaduct and I saw it again in the distance. I was late again, but on my return trip I stopped off to take a look.
It is surely one of the best Renaissance-style churches in America, and I haven’t found any photos online that do it justice. The purity of the proportions of the facade have to be appreciated on-site relative to its narrow street, but there is furthermore in the place an affecting atmosphere of neglect there. The windows are gone, weeds are growing on the steps, and all is silent. The church has been abandoned, and the diocese of Brooklyn has made plans to destroy it. The school and rectory are already gone. But I read that the New York Landmarks Conservancy is on the case, working to avert its demolition. If money is involved, what a bishop says is writ in water, but there really isn’t another building quite like this in New York. And if it’s torn down, Lord knows it won’t be replaced with anything nearly as excellent.
5 Comments