Country US Completed 1970 | Construction started 1968 (for church) Demolished 1970 | |
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Town or city Manhattan, New York City Cost $240,000 (for 1968 church) Address 44 2nd Ave, New York, NY 10003, USA Architectural style Greek Revival architecture Client Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York Architects Alexander Jackson Davis, James Gallier Similar St Pius V's Church, Immaculate Conception of the Ble, St Benedict the Moor, Church of St Simon Stock, St Margaret Mary's Ch | ||
The Church of the Nativity is a former Roman Catholic parish church in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, located at 44 Second Avenue between Second and 3rd Streets in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1842 and was formerly staffed by the Jesuit Fathers.
In November 2014, the archdiocese announced that the Church of the Nativity was one of 31 of its parishes which would be merged with other parishes. Nativity Parish was merged into Most Holy Redeemer Parish at 173 East 3rd Street and the church was being reduced to a mission church of the parish.
Buildings
The original painted-timber Greek Revival sanctuary was built in 1832 at 48 Second Avenue as the Second Avenue Presbyterian Church and was designed by the prominent New York firm of Town & Davis, which then included Alexander Jackson Davis, J. H. Dakin, and James Gallier. It consisted of a Greek Doric portico and two-stage steeple. In 1842, it was sold to the newly formed Nativity of Our Lord parish and became the Church of the Nativity. It was demolished in 1970.
The present Modernist church was built from 1968 to 1970 for $240,000 to the designs of Genovese & Maddalene. It has been described as "starkly institutional" and "a modern architectural cartoon exhibiting a gross idea with no detail."
The parish included within its territory the headquarters of the Catholic Worker Movement and was the site of the Funeral Mass of its co-founder, Dorothy Day, in December 1980.