On this Ash Wednesday (and St. Valentine’s Day), let’s visit one of NYC’s oldest Catholic churches at Mulberry and Prince Streets in Little Italy. Old St. Patrick’s is called “old” to differentiate it from its “newer” cousin uptown, St. Patrick’s Cathedral at 5th Avenue and East 50th, designed by James Renwick Jr., opened 1878 and finished in 1888. Old St. Pat’s, NYC’s original Catholic cathedral, is quite a bit older, having started construction in 1809 and completed in 1815, making it one of the oldest buildings in Chinatown/Little Italy. In March 2010 Pope Benedict XVI announced that it would become Manhattan’s first basilica, a church that has been accorded certain specific and ceremonial rites only the Pope can bestow. In 2010, FNY detailed the church, so if you’re curious, I’ll direct you there.
Though the churchyard and its graves are gated off and inaccessible, I did manage a few shots over the gates. Among the burials are the Venerable Pierre Toussaint and Stephen Jumel, whose uptown mansion in Sugar Hill is Manhattan’s oldest remaining private residence. The catacombs are occasionally open to the public.
“Dagger John” Hughes, the first Archbishop of the Diocese of New York, was originally interred in the Old St. Patrick’s churchyard. Though his remains were moved uptown to the “new” St. Patrick’s at 5th Avenue, he is memorialized here. “He became known as ‘Dagger John,’ both for his following the Catholic practice wherein a bishop precedes his signature with a cross, as well as for his aggressive personality.”
For some interior views of Old St. Patrick’s, see the Newtown Pentacle.
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2/14/24
5 comments
“Is this a dagger which I see before me…”, you might hear some English majors reciting if they visit st. Patrick’s churchyard
An easy read is “Dagger John”, by John Loughery. It is available inexpensively in a used softback printing on Amazon. The story is not only of one man, but of the significant changes to New York during his time and influence.
The churchyard is interesting for two reasons, one very old and one very new. The older one holds that small holes in the brick wall that surrounds the churchyard allowed defencers to fire on those who attacked the Church during anti-Catholic riots. The newer one is that goats are brought in on a regular basis to graze the churchyard to keep down the weeds and grass that would grow around the headstones and markers.
The Singing Nuns sang the Dagger John ballad on the Ed Sullivan show.They came on after
the Beatles
There was more than one?
Yeah,there were 3 others too.They also sang their latest hit, Dominica nica nica nica nica noo….