ST. ANDREW’S CHURCH, CITY HALL

St. Andrew’s Church was consecrated here on Duane Street behind the Municipal Building in 1939, replacing an earlier church named Carroll Hall built in 1842. Just before the Civil War when the City Hall area became the center of the printing and newspaper business, the church received special dispensation to say a “printer’s Mass” at 2:30 AM  for the night shift of newspapermen and printers. It later became the first parish church to offer a noon Mass for the growing number of businessmen in the area. The Latin phrase on the frieze, Beati qui ambulant in lege domini, means ‘Blessed are those who walk in the law of the Lord.’ [Gerard Wolfe]

Patrick Cardinal Hayes (November 20, 1867 – September 4, 1938) was from the Five Points area and attended this church as a youth. He was an American Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of New York from 1919 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1924. A boys’ high school in the south Bronx bears his name.

City Hall Place, which runs from Duane Street to Pearl Street, was renamed for Cardinal Hayes. Duane Street is closed to traffic east of Centre Street and the church faces a pedestrian plaza behind the Municipal Building. Duane Street curves here as it followed a stream that issued from Collect Pond.

The St. Andrew’s Church entrance is flanked by representations of the saint carrying an X-shaped cross. The saint, the brother of St. Peter, recognized as the first Pope, was crucified according to Church tradition on a cross in the shape of an X, as he considered himself unworthy of a cross the same shape as the one Christ had been crucified upon. (His brother Peter, according to Church tradition, also considered himself unworthy of Christ’s cross and was martyred upside-down on an inverted cross.) Additionally, the Greek letter chi, the first letter in the name of Christ, takes the same shape as the Roman letter “x.”

The church’s connection to the printing trade reminds me of when I was in the advertising type business, as I served at all-night type shops that have long been closed such as Photogenic Graphics, Line and Tone, and my most successful stint, at Photo-Lettering, where I worked for seven years. As late as 2018 I served several weeks at an all-night financial printing shop.

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11/27/23