Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Annunciation, Williamsburg

These photos were taken in October of 2006. Please read below, as the information may have changed.


Many thanks to the author of the parish website (link here) for posting an informative history of this parish and its recent status. The address of Blessed Virgin Mary of the Annunciation parish is 259 North Fifth Street, Brooklyn NY 11211, at Havemeyer Street, just west of the din of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and very close to Metropolitan Avenue. The diocesan website in July, 2009, provides no phone number, so one might search through the above parish link.
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My interest in this parish came when a distant relative said her uncle, son of German immigrants, was baptized here in the 1890's. This parish was originally German. It became Lithuanian in 1914, and it remains a Lithuanian center that also welcomes the congregation of a Mass in Spanish. There is no resident priest. According to the AIA Guide, the present church was built in 1870 by the architect F. J. Berlenbach. The guide gives the shape was "basilica," that is a rectangular hall, Roman court house style, with Lombardian Romanesque designs. In the above photo, one can see a Lithuanian cross.
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The 1889 convent on Havemeyer Street is a condominium. The Dominican Sisters of Amityville (and from Regensburg, Bavaria, in the mid-1800's) apparently staffed the school for decades. The school closed in 1973.




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St. Nicholas, Olive Street, Williamsburg

Effective January 31, 2011, the historic parish of St. Nicholas was merged with two other parishes to form the parish of Divine Mercy. Olive Street, Williamsburg, is about two miles inland from the East River, away from the center of Williamsburg. Here is St. Nicholas parish, founded about 1865 for Germans too distant from Montrose Avenue and Most Holy Trinity parish. 

The Dominican Sisters of Amityville staffed this school for many years.
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Please view the website of Queen of the Rosary Catholic Academy at 11 Catherine Street.




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