Country United States Structural system Masonry brick Architectural style Eclecticism | Cost school: $45,000 Phone +1 212-862-6130 Architect Thomas Henry Poole | |
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Town or city Hamilton Heights
Manhattan, New York City Construction started church: 1889
rectory c.1926 Completed church: 1890
rectory: c.1926
school: 1937 Address 506 W 153rd St, New York, NY 10031, USA Client Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York Similar St Pius V's Church, St Benedict the Moor, St Francis Xavier's Church, Church of St Simon Stock, Visitation of the Blessed | ||
The Church of St. Catherine of Genoa is a Roman Catholic parish church in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, located at 504 West 153rd Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.
Contents
The AIA Guide to New York City calls the gabled church "a unique star" of the Hamilton Heights neighborhood.
History
The parish was established in 1887 from Annunciation and St. Elizabeth parishes south and north of it. Services were held in a local movie theater until a church could be built.
The church was constructed between 1889 and 1890 in an Eclectic style, to the designs by Thomas H. Poole. The design is particularly marked by the building's wide crow-stepped gable and ogee-headed openings, very similar to Poole's more compact Our Lady of Good Counsel (1892), and a predecessor to Poole's grander-scaled St. Thomas the Apostle in Harlem, now closed. The facade is "golden-hued brick", and the building features a "deep porch sheltered by a bracketed entryway."
A parish school was started in 1910. The rectory next door at 506 West 153rd Street was built c.1926, and in 1937 the Rev. John J. Brady had a four-story brick schoolhouse built at 508-510 West 153rd Street to designs by Jules Lewis. The school closed in 2006, but the building is now used by the New York City Department of Education for P.S. 226.
Parish
The parishioners of St. Catherine of Genoa were Irish immigrants when the church was established. Today there is a mix of African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and Haitians. Services are held in English, Spanish, French and Haitian/Creole.