Sunday, April 24, 2016

Cathedral College, Washington & Atlantic Avenues

I have only walked by this large, impressive building on the northeast corner of Atlantic Avenue and Washington Avenue, but a new item in N. Y. Curbed (a website with real estate articles) talks about the renovation and offering of one condo in the building.  The link is HERE.
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If I can reconstruct history from my fallible memory, Cathedral College was a minor seminary of the diocese of Brooklyn when "minor seminary" included four years of high school and two years of college.  Many of the students were not residents, as is true at the current Cathedral Prep in Elmhurst, Queens.  Priestly training was in the 6+6 format.  About 1980, the Archdiocese of New York and the Dioceses of Brooklyn and Rockville Centre switched to 4+4+4, that is, four years of high school, four years of college, and four years of theology.  In 2016, New York, Brooklyn, and Rockville Centre send most of their theology students to Dunwoodie in Yonkers. There are few high school seminaries in the United States.
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Many of the priests who taught at Cathedral College at 555 Washington Avenue lived there and assisted in parishes on weekends. The people of the neighborhood suffered some bad years. A priest related how he returned to the college one evening to be met by a homicide unit and a victim in the courtyard pictured in the article.

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