St. Thomas Aquinas, Park Slope

The photos and text below are from when I visited this parish in 2010.  Much has changed since then. The church is red brick, not painted off-white as in my photo.  The interior is more colorful. Please see The Tablet article of June 18, 2015, for a complete description of the extensive renovations.  The article includes an excellent slide show.

St. Thomas Aquinas church is located on the northeast corner of Fourth Avenue (to the left) and Ninth Street (with bus B61 at the right). Its mailing address is 249 Ninth Street, Brooklyn NY 11215, telephone 718-768-9471. In 2008, Holy Family parish on 14th Street was merged with St. Thomas Aquinas.

The parish was established in 1884. If I read the history on the website correctly, this church was dedicated in 1886.

These clips for men's caps and hats appeared in many churches in the last century.

A helpful folder available inside the church offers suggestions for prayer. "The doors of our church are open all day as a symbol that all are welcomed to enter and pray!" St. Thomas Aquinas is depicted with a scroll on which is written "Joy is the noblest human act."
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Regarding that axiom, an interesting link is here.

This building at Fourth Avenue and Eighth Street was the parish school from 1919 to 2005. It is now rented to the New York City Board of Education. There are at least several public school buildings with crosses in our city. The Brentwood Josephites taught in this parish since 1884.
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In Brooklyn there are two parishes named St. Thomas Aquinas. The other one is in Flatlands, established almost at the same time, but before Flatlands was part of the city of Brooklyn.





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St. Augustine, Sixth Avenue

St. Augustine's church was built in 1888, under the design of the Profitt brothers.

The above view shows the Sterling Place (south) end of the former parish school buildings, which run through to Park Place.  Sisters of St. Joseph taught elementary grades at this end of the building.  
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Tragically, on December 16, 1960, teachers and students saw an airliner descend along Stirling Place (left to right in this photo) before it crashed near Seventh Avenue. 
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From the 1930's until the 1970's, De La Salle Christian Brothers lived in the building where the bay window indicates their chapel.  They taught at St. Augustine's Diocesan High School, now housing a public middle school.  Both the Brothers and the high school used the address 64 Park Place.  A link to that school's alumni organization is here.  One alumnus of the school was Governor Hugh Carey.
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Before the Brothers moved here from St. James Cathedral School in the 1930's, the house was the Sisters' convent.  They moved across the street to the corner of Park Place and Sixth Avenue.

In August of 2016, an alumnus of both the elementary school and high school gave me two links that explain further development of the property.  It seems that part of the property will see 62 condos built within the existing buildings.

The links are HERE and Brooklyn Eagle 4.12.2016.

St. Nicholas Ukrainian church

In my walks about Park Slope, I neglected a church of the Ukrainian Catholic Diocese of Stamford, St. Nicholas at 256 19th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215.  The onion-domed church with a high stoop is on the south side of 19th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. The parish appears to have been established in 1911.

St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Academy

St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Academy, an elementary school, is located at 241 Prospect Park West, Brooklyn NY 11215, telephone 718-768-7629, close to Holy Name Church.  The school's website is linked here.  In September, 2012, this academy was formed by the merger of the parish elementary schools at Holy Name and Immaculate Heart of Mary.
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The 2016 Official Catholic Directory states that St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Academy reported an enrollment of 314 students.

Holy Name, Windsor Terrace

The address of Holy Name of Jesus church is 245 Prospect Park West, Brooklyn NY 11215, telephone 718-768-3071. The parish website is linked here. Prospect Park West is in front of the church, with Prospect Avenue alongside the church.  The Mass schedule above was photographed in April, 2013.

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The parish Facebook page is linked HERE.

Clicking on any photo will enlarge it. In 2013, the church property was being renovated, as described in this link.  An altar designed by James Renwick is being moved from the closed church of St. Vincent de Paul, Williamsburg, to this church.
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The parish school at 241 Prospect Park West has been renamed St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Academy, website linked here.

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For almost a century, Sisters of St. Joseph staffed this parish school, and the Xaverian Brothers taught her for several decades. An excellent guide titled "Weekend Walks in Brooklyn" was authored by Robert J. Regalbuto, who graduated from this school in 1964. He says the school was built in 1923 and the Gothic Revival church dates to 1878.
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The three organizations with offices in the former convent apparently deal with diocesan finances.  The name "Rocklyn" hints at a joint venture with the diocese of Rockville Centre, but the few notices I have come across are in Brooklyn.  There are also diocesan corporations named Rocklyn Properties and Rocklyn Ecclesiastica.  Futures in Education is linked here.  It seems to work with the Catholic Foundation for Brooklyn and Queens, but both seem to raise funds for diocesan operations.  Futures in Education submitted an IRS form 990 in 2011 showing a balance of $5.8 million.

Church of the Virgin Mary, Park Slope

The Melkite Church of the Virgin Mary stands on the southwest corner of Eighth Avenue and Second Street in Park Slope.  Its address is 216 Eighth Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11215, telephone 718-788-5454.  The parish website is linked here, and I learned more by downloading a Newsletter from the tab on the left.  This parish belongs to the Melkite Catholic Eparchy of Newton, Massachusetts.

Resurrection Coptic Catholic Church, Park Slope

Resurrection Coptic Catholic Church is located on the south side of 14th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues.  In the adjacent garden is a statue of Mary, with the Latin inscription, Ave Maria, Ora pro nobis, "Hail, Mary, pray for us."  The address is 328 14th Street, Brooklyn NY 11215.
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I am uncertain how to express the canonical and juridical relationship of this parish to the diocese of Brooklyn.  It is clearly part of the Patriarchate of Alexandria, Egypt, Eastern Catholics who in January, 2013, elected a new patriarch.  Other internet descriptions of Coptic Catholics relate that this parish is one of three in the United States.  It was established in the former St. Stanislaus Martyr church about 1985.
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The church has a cornerstone of 1891.  Apparently a Scandinavian national parish, in 1979 St. Stanislaus Martyr was merged into nearby Holy Family parish, which itself became part of St. Thomas Aquinas parish, Ninth Street.  Sunset Park and Bay Ridge used to have a more Swedish and Norwegian population than at present. Please distinguish between two different saints named Stanislaus: St. Stanislaus Martyr, killed in Krakow in 1079 (the patron of this parish when dedicated) and St. Stanislaus Kostka, a Jesuit novice who died in Rome in 1568. The parish of St. Stanislaus Kostka is in Greenpoint. 
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The diocese of Brooklyn has a fair number of repeated names of parishes. In the borough of Queens, there is also a parish of St. Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr in Ozone Park and another parish of St. Stanislaus Kostka in Maspeth. Likewise, there is another Resurrection parish in Gerritsen Beach.

Saint Saviour High School, Park Slope

Saint Saviour High School is a highly-regarded Catholic school for girls, located at 588 Sixth Street, Brooklyn NY 11215, telephone 718-768-4406.  I urge you to view the school's website, linked here. 

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The school is on Sixth Street between Prospect Park West and Eighth Avenue, Park Slope.
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For Saint Saviour parish and its elementary school, please see below.

Saint Saviour, Park Slope

St. Saviour church is located at the southeast corner of Eighth Avenue and Sixth Street in Park Slope. Its mailing address is 611 Eighth Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11215, telephone 718-768-7983. The parish website tells much about the functioning of the parish, and the history page is commendable. In September, 2016, some of the graphics did not display (due to broken links?) and minutes of the pastoral planning council stop with March, 2015.

The parish high school is at 588 Sixth Street, Brooklyn NY 11215, telephone 718-768-4406. The website is linked here. The cornerstone of the building is dated 1908, so I presume that sometime in the 1950's the elementary department moved to a newer building on Eighth Avenue, shown below.
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On nearby Seventh Avenue, the public high school's cornerstone is dated MCMII. Park Slope's elegance goes back to the nineteenth century. In quite a few American cities, wealthier folk sought to live on "Prospect Street" or on "The Heights." Workers tended to live near their riverfront jobs.

Above is Saint Saviour Catholic Academy, 701 Eighth Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11215, telephone 718-768-8000, website linked here.



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St. John the Evangelist, Park Slope, & St. Rocco

Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio issued a decree 5.20.2011 suppressing the parishes of St. Rocco and St. John the Evangelist and creating a new parish, named St. John the Evangelist - St. Rocco. Both churches, about a half-mile apart, will remain open as worship sites. The rectory for the combined parish will be at St. John the Evangelist, 250 21st Street, Brooklyn NY 11215, shown in the above photograph. In 2016,the new website of the parish is linked HERE.  There are three weekend Masses at St. John the Evangelist, and one at St. Rocco.
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The church of St. John the Evangelist is on the south side of 21st Street as the street ascends from Fifth Avenue to Sixth Avenue, Park Slope. As you can see in the above photo looking east, the nave is parallel to 21st Street. As the parish was established in 1849, maybe the parish grounds were purchased before the surrounding plots were modified. I don't know how many successive church buildings the parish had.

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A 1944 view of the church, together with a current satellite view, is linked here.
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The diocesan television office produced an excellent video of the interior of the church of St. John the Evangelist.  In the video, host Anthony Mangano, who grew up in this parish, interviews the pastor in 2013, Rev. Kenneth Grande, who explains the history and artwork of the church.  Mangano adds many interesting descriptions of the neighborhood.  Please note that the presentation is divided into segments, so the pieces would fit shorter television slots.

Opposite the church is the former parish school, with a cornerstone dated 1904, which closed in 1989. It appears to be in excellent condition as an apartment house.

Above are the church and rectory of St. Rocco on 27th Street. between Fourth and Fifth Avenues. The banner over the door celebrates the centennial of St. Rocco's parish, established in 1902.  The 478 acres of Green-Wood Cemetery begin at Fifth Avenue.

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This youth center at the corner of Fourth Avenue and 27th Street was dedicated in 1956. By clicking on the photo you may notice that 27th Street also commemorates Sister Mary Franciscus. This link explains OBT and the work of this Sister of Mercy.
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A helpful article in the Home Reporter of 7.11.2011 is linked here.  It describes the merger of the two parishes.  The diocese has removed the decree from the diocesan website.
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A comment follows:
There once was a time when St. Rocco's Youth Center of the Home of St. Rocco's Cadets Drum and Bugle Corps... Founded in 1957 By the late great Andy DiOrio...
All though the Cadets disbanded in 1969... The members of St. Rocco's Cadets to this day keep the spirit of those days close to their hearts... They came from all walks of life... Rich kids, poor kids, black or white... It didn't matter who you were...
All you had to do is walk in those doors and willing to dedicate yourself to Andy's vision... 

Andy DiOrio was the father some never had... We called him Uncle Andy, or Big Andy... And in a time of civil unrest,he showed the whole Drum Corps community how kids of all races could come together and produce one of the greatest Drums Corps that ever took the field of competition...

It seems to me the world was a better place for me way back then... The youth Center became our home... a safe house where you could learn with the help of your fellow Cadets to be your very best....

Andy DiOrio pasted away in the summer of 2009...
And we came from all over the country to honor our father, and it felt good to be amongst each other...

God has blessed us all through this single man... Who had made better men, and women with him amazing heart.....

R.I.P
Harold Smiley Davis (zippy)

St. Rocco's Cadets Website:
www.stroccoscadets.com/

Our Lady of Peace, Gowanus

Our Lady of Peace parish is at 522 Carroll Street, Brooklyn NY 11215-1030, telephone 718-624-5122, west of Fourth Avenue and near the Union St. station of the R train.  It seems that the Immaculate Conception Province of Franciscans, O.F.M., serve the parish.

The parish school is now occupied by PS 372, The Children's School. Note the two flags, two crosses.

Above, the Franciscan monastery and the church are on the south side of Carroll Street. The cornerstone of the church is marked 1904.

The official international website of the Neocatechumenal Way is linked here.
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If you have not done so yet, you may want to view the Comments link above the first photo.  One inquiry is for photos from the 1930's.  Google's Blogger or Blogpost hides the email addresses on most profiles, so communication can be difficult.  For photo searches, I suggest trying the Image search on Google, Bing, or Flickr.  The Brooklyn Public Library has a rather good (but not all-inclusive) photo catalog search tool linked here.

St. Francis Xavier, Sixth Ave., Park Slope

The rectory address is 225 Sixth Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11215, telephone 718-638-1880. For more information, please visit the parish website here. The parish of St. Augustine was established in 1870, and St. Francis Xavier parish in 1886. The two churches are only six blocks apart on beautiful Sixth Avenue. This photo shows the 1888 cornerstone of St. Francis Xavier church.
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The parish has an elementary school.  Its informative website is linked HERE.

The above invitation to a Lenten Mission faces Sixth Avenue in early March, 2010.
Please click the photo to enlarge it.
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Two sources list the architect as Thomas Houghton: Marrone's book and this one.  However, his date of death is given 1903 in one, 1913 in the other.




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Holy Family, 14th Street, Park Slope

The parish of Holy Family was established in 1880 for German Catholics, the same year that another Holy Family parish was established on Flatlands Avenue, Canarsie! A third Holy Family parish was established for Slovaks in 1905 in Greenpoint. The parish school here closed in 1978. The church in the photo was built in 1928.






Please click on the word Comments above the photo for interesting memories.
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Holy Family parish, 14th Street, has been merged with that of St. Thomas Aquinas, 9th Street, under one pastor. The website for the merged parish is linked here and a parish blog is linked here. Neither location offers a parish elementary school. It seems that Mass is offered at Holy Family once a week, 9 a.m. Sundays.