CECILIA, you’re breakin’ my heart. The St. Cecilia Church parish was founded in 1877, while its classic church building, nearly basilica-size at Herbert and North Henry Streets, was built from 1891-1901 by ecclesiastical architect Thomas Poole. Its green copper dome was a familiar sight for me when visiting friends in the area, and it’s quite obvious when traveling north on the nearby Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The stained-glass windows include renderings of Saint Cecilia, who is the patron saint of music; according to legend, she was a martyr in second-century Common Era Rome.
My focus today, though, is on the magnificent brick former grade school associated with the parish, at Richardson and Monitor, a couple of blocks away. It doesn’t seem to have made the architectural books, but it’s notable nonetheless. Look at those “SC” entablatures found above the windows on the second and third floors. The building was dedicated in 1907, a few years after the church itself.
The parish unfortunately ran out of wherewithal to maintain the school and the shuttered the sschool in 2008, 101 years after it opened. The school was purchased by a developer, who created over 60 apartments within. Fortunately, not a lot of alterations to the exterior had to be made. School construction of the early 20th Century is the best.
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1/2/24
10 comments
I mean, really, what did he expect? He get up to wash his face of all things, of course Cecelia’s not going to like that.
Actually, the developer signed a 49 year lease with the parish to develop the property.
On some old schools there were separate entrances marked “Boys” or” Girls” to prevent
hanky panky
What does 5=60 mean? A typographical error perhaps? (it happens to the beast of us)
60
sorry
And I apologize for MY typo (I meant to type BEST not BEAST) As Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, would have said: “Sorry about that..”
“Missed it by THAT much…”
“…and loving it!”
I, too, awaited clarification of the “5=60” slip of the ol’ fingers.
And now that we’ve received it, *60* apartments? Must be some pretty small ones packed in there.
This building doesn’t appear to be meaningfully bigger than the one I spent my formative years in,
and it had “only” 40 apartments on the top five floors, with 4 more on the ground level.
Lived blocks away..the ghost of sister Sylvester haunted me as i ran around the school one summer day..and there was always a light on in the window of the third floor