St. Benedict the Moor Church was a Black Catholic parish church in the

Archdiocese of New York The Archdiocese of New York ( la, Archidiœcesis Neo-Eboracensis) is an ecclesiastical territory or archdiocese of the Catholic Church ( particularly the Roman Catholic or Latin Church) located in the State of New York. It encompasses the boroug ...

, located at 342 West

53rd Street 53rd Street is a Midtown Manhattan, midtown cross street in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Manhattan, that runs adjacent to buildings such as the Citigroup Center, Citigroup building. It is 1.83 miles (2.94 km) ...

Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan Hell's Kitchen, also known as Clinton, is a neighborhood on the West Side of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is considered to be bordered by 34th Street (or 41st Street) to the south, 59th Street to the north, Eighth Avenue to the eas ...

(Clinton),

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. The property was sold to a developer in 2023. __toc__

Parish

In 1883 a Black Catholic mission parish named after St.

Benedict the Moor Benedict the Moor ( it, Benedetto da San Fratello; 1526 – 4 April 1589) was a Sicilian Franciscan friar who is venerated as a saint in the Catholic church. Born of enslaved Africans in San Fratello, he was freed at birth and became known for ...

was established, based on a $5,000 bequest by Fr Thomas Farrell to serve the

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

community in

Lower Manhattan Lower Manhattan (also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York) is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with ...

; his will and testament specified that if the Catholic Church was unable to spend funds for this purpose, it would instead go to the Protestant

Colored Orphan Asylum The Colored Orphan Asylum was an institution in New York City, open from 1836 to 1946. It housed on average four hundred children annually and was mostly managed by women. Its first location was on Fifth Avenue between 42nd and 43rd Streets in M ...

. It was the first church in the city for black Catholics David W. Dunlap,
From Abyssinian to Zion: A Guide to Manhattan's Houses of Worship
'. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.) p. 219. and the first north of the

Mason–Dixon line The Mason–Dixon line, also called the Mason and Dixon line or Mason's and Dixon's line, is a demarcation line separating four U.S. states, forming part of the borders of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia (part of Virginia ...

."St. Benedict the Moor Church"
NYC AGO, accessed 21 March 2015 In 1892, the parish took over the former Third Universalist Church at 210

Bleecker Street Bleecker Street is an east–west street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is most famous today as a Greenwich Village nightclub district. The street connects a neighborhood today popular for music venues and comedy, but which was ...

, at a time when many African Americans lived in southern Manhattan. It renamed that church for its parish. Upon leaving the church on Bleecker Street, the building became occupied by Our Lady of Pompeii Church. Fr

Augustus Tolton John Augustus Tolton (April 1, 1854 – July 9, 1897), baptized Augustine Tolton, was the first Catholic priest in the United States publicly known to be Black. (The Healy brothers, who preceded him, all passed for White.) Tolton was ordaine ...

, the first openly-Black Catholic priest in the United States, celebrated his first

Mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...

in America at this parish in 1886. A little over a decade later, the first openly-Black Catholic seminarian,

William Augustine Williams William Augustine Williams (also William Augustine Willyams/Willyms or Gullielmus Williams; May 26, 1836 — May 21, 1901) was an African-American linguist, librarian, Catholic seminarian, and public figure. He was the first openly African-Americ ...

(who entered seminary in Rome in 1853 and departed in 1862), became the parish

sacristan A sacristan is an officer charged with care of the sacristy, the church, and their contents. In ancient times, many duties of the sacrist were performed by the doorkeepers ( ostiarii), and later by the treasurers and mansionarii. The Decretals ...

. As the black population moved north, in 1898 the parish took over the former Second German Church of the

Evangelical Association The Evangelical Church or Evangelical Association, also known in the early 1800s as the Albright Brethren, was a "body of American Christians chiefly of German descent", Arminian in doctrine and theology; in its form of church government, Methodi ...

at 342 W. 53rd Street in Hell's Kitchen, renaming it as St. Benedict the Moor Church. More change came by the end of the next two decades. In the 1920s, many of the parishioners moved with other African Americans to

Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street (Manhattan), 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and 110th Street (Manhattan), ...

, which became a center of African-American life. (King1893NYC)_pg402_CHURCH_OF_ST

After 1953, the church was staffed by Spanish friars of the

Third Order of Saint Francis The Third Order of Saint Francis is a third order in the Franciscan tradition of Christianity, founded by the medieval Catholic Church in Italy, Italian Catholic friar Francis of Assisi. The preaching of Francis and his disciples caused many ma ...

and was rededicated in 1954. The parish was later reduced to mission status, and is maintained by members of the new Lumen Christi congregation. Although recommended for closure during an initial review, the Archdiocese announced on January 19, 2007, that the church would retain its parish status. On June 30, 2017, the church was deconsecrated. Dolan, Timothy Michael (June 30, 2017
"Decree on the Relegation of the Church of Saint Benedict the Moor in the Parish of Sacred Heart of Jesus–Saint Benedict the Moor, New York"
Office of the Cardinal, Archdiocese of New York It was sold to a developer in 2023.

Buildings

The

Italianate-style The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian ...

red brick

pediment Pediments are gables, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the lintel, or entablature, if supported by columns. Pediments can contain an overdoor and are usually topped by hood moulds. A pedimen ...

ed church was built in 1869, designed by R.C. McLane & Sons for the Second German Church of the Evangelical Association. A three-storey

rectory A clergy house is the residence, or former residence, of one or more priests or ministers of religion. Residences of this type can have a variety of names, such as manse, parsonage, rectory or vicarage. Function A clergy house is typically ow ...

at 338–342 West 53rd Street was built in 1965 to the designs of Joseph Mitchell, of 355 West

54th Street 54th Street is a two-mile-long (3.2 km), one-way street traveling west to east across Midtown Manhattan. Notable places, west to east Twelfth Avenue *The route begins at Twelfth Avenue (New York Route 9A). Opposite the intersection is the New ...

, for $220,000. That rectory reused the statue of the

Virgin Mary Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph and the mother o ...

with outstretched arms from the church.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Benedict the Moor Church, New York City Italianate architecture in New York City Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan Roman Catholic churches completed in 1890 Religious organizations disestablished in 2017 2017 disestablishments in New York (state) African-American Roman Catholic churches Closed churches in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York Former Roman Catholic church buildings in New York City African-American history in New York City 19th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in the United States Italianate church buildings in the United States