Our Lady of Solace, Coney Island

(Please click on the green word "comments" below for some memories.)
In the above photo at sundown, Mermaid Avenue runs from left to right in the foreground. Our Lady of Solace church is on the northwest corner of Mermaid Avenue and West 17th Street.

The mailing address for Our Lady of Solace parish is 2866 West 17th Street, Brooklyn NY 11224, telephone 718-266-1612. This parish, founded in 1900, is the sole Catholic parish on the peninsula called Coney Island. By good fortune, the location has become central to transportation. West 17th Street is a continuation of Cropsey Avenue, with its exits from the Belt Parkway. Two blocks east is the Stillwell Avenue terminal of four subway routes (B. D. F. N) and and a maze of bus routes. One block south of the church is Keyspan Park, a resplendent minor league stadium. A further block south is the boardwalk and beach.
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The parish's excellent, well-developed website is linked here. Note especially the history page.  At present, three Vocationist Fathers, S.D.V., serve the parish.
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The former parish elementary school on West 19th Street is now rented or sold to the Board of Education as a high school for transfer students, Liberation Diploma Plus. For many years before the parish school closed, the Dominican Sisters taught there.
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The numbered streets of Brooklyn do not resemble those of Manhattan, where east and west designate ends of the same street. In Brooklyn, the prefix is important. All the numbered streets prefixed "West" are in Coney Island. "East" numbered streets are in East Flatbush. "Bay" numbered streets are in Bensonhurst and Bath Beach. "Beach" numbered streets are in Rockaway, Queens.

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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Parish schools that have closed

In my visit to Sunset Park in 2009, I did not get to Seventh Avenue and the parish and school of St. Agatha. What surprised me at St. Rocco, St. Michael, and Our Lady of Czestochowa was that I found three adjacent parishes without schools. By checking the diocesan website, I count about forty open parish schools with Brooklyn zip codes. At a now-unavailable page of the diocesan website, I came across a list of about 63 parish schools in Brooklyn that have closed. To avoid double-counting, I have attempted to exclude from that number schools that still exist as merged and schools that were closed in sequence. ("Unavailable page" as of 2012.)
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It would appear that the following ten zip codes lack a Catholic elementary school: 11201-Main (0 of 6 parishes); 11212-Brownsville (0 of 1 parish); 11216-Brevoort (0 of 1 parish); 11217-TimesPlaza (0 of 1 parish); 11219 (0 of 2 parishes); 11224-ConeyIsland (0 of 1 parish); 11230-Midwood (0 of 1 parish); 11231-RedHook (0 of 5 parishes); 11232-BushTerminal (0 of 3 parishes); 11238-Adelphi (0 of 3 parishes).  (This 2009 analysis deserves editing, as more schools have been closed and the switch to "Catholic academies" is only about half complete in October, 2012.)
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This official website lists the open Catholic elementary schools and academies of Brooklyn.

Our Lady of Czestochowa, 24th St. near Fourth Avenue

Our Lady of Czestochowa church is located on the south side of 24th Street, Brooklyn, between Fourth and Third Avenues. The parish mailing address is 183 25th Street, Brooklyn NY 11232, telephone 718-768-5724. The website is at http://olcbrooklyn.org/
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Because of the tail or ogonek on the third letter, the city's name is sometimes spelled Czenstochowa, as over the doors of the rectory and former school, shown below. In 1980, the parish of St. Casimir in Williamsburg was merged with this parish. Hence, the full name of this parish is Our Lady of Czenstochowa - St. Casimir, both names indicating Polish heritage.


When I stopped by Our Lady of Czestochowa church on Tuesday, June 23, 2009, the 12:15 Mass included the 30th wedding anniversary celebration of a couple. Congratulations!

Note the reproduction of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa over the altar. Do the statues of Franciscan saints indicate that this was once a Franciscan parish?

Above is the rectory on 25th Street. Fourth Avenue is to the right.


Artillery guards the former parish school on 25th Street. The statue commemorates Gold Star Mothers, mothers of soldiers killed in action. The parish school closed in 1996.
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Please click on the "Comments" note above in tan to read six heartfelt comments.  One person asks about retrieving a marriage record from about 1890.  Churches do keep marriage registers, and they do make copies or issue certificates.  Usually there is a fee, and there could be a problem searching the parish marriage register if you do not know the date of marriage.  I believe the registers are chronological, without an index of names. At the moment, April 2013, ancestry.com is offering a free look at their marriage index.


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St. Michael, Fourth Avenue and 42 St., Sunset Park

The parish of St. Michael was established in 1870, and this imposing church was built in 1905, under the direction of architect Raymond J. Almirall. The view looks north, with the former high school and the church taking up the block from 43rd St. to 42nd Street on the west side of Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn.

The mailing address for St. Michael's parish is 352 42nd Street, Brooklyn NY 11232, telephone 718-768-6065.


St. Michael's parish elementary school closed in 2005.


As with all photos on this blog, a click will enlarge the photo and enable you to read inscriptions. 
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This LINK will explain the housing of St. Michael's Diocesan HS (for boys) at the parish from 1926 to about 1960, when the teachers and boys moved to the new Xaverian High School.