Architectural style Gothic Revival Completed 1918 | Country United States | |
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Town or city Manhattan, New York City Client Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York Structural system Masonry brick with terracotta trim | ||
The Church of St. Elizabeth of Hungary is a Roman Catholic parish church in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, located at 211 East 83rd Street, between Second and Third Avenues, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City.
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In November 2014, the Archdiocese announced that the Church of St. Elizabeth of Hungary was one of 31 neighborhood parishes which would be merged into other parishes. St. Elizabeth of Hungary and St. Stephen of Hungary were to be merged into the Church of St. Monica at 413 East 79th Street.
History
St. Elizabeth's was founded by Slovakian immigrants on the Lower East Side, with the first Mass celebrated on April 26, 1891 in the basement of St. Bridget's Church on 8th Street and Avenue B. The first church building was located 345 East 4th Street, which hosted its first Mass on August 7, 1892. A special feature of the New York Times in 1901, mentioned the church, listed as "the Hungarian church," among other Catholic structures in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, describing the group "for the most part...limit[ing] themselves to the functions of a parish church, in districts where social needs are otherwise supplied." Without comment on other facilities attached.
As parishioners relocated, it became necessary to move the parish. The former Second Emmanuel Lutheran Church church on East 83rd Street, built in 1892, became the new home for St. Elizabeth's on June 7, 1917. It underwent several expansions in the following decades.
As the local Slovak population declined later in the 20th century, Cardinal Cooke redesignated it as a church for the deaf Catholics of New York on July 1, 1980.
Building
The AIA Guide to NYC (Fifth Edition, 2010), neglects to mention an architect, describing the Gothic Revival church as "a class, spired neo-Gothic exterior, is the treat is within: ascent the stairs to view a just heavenly vaulted ceiling painted in the colors o of Ravenna's mosaics."