R.I.P. ST. COLUMBA

by Kevin Walsh June 24, 2026

June 24, 2026

Previously in 2026, First Reformed Church of Astoria (1888) and South Bushwick Church (1853) perished by fire; more recently, St. Columba Catholic Church in Chelsea has been demolished. Not a good year to be a church in NYC. Despite the feminine-appearing name, Columba was a sixth-century Irish monk who helped spread Christianity in Scotland.

By THOMAS RINALDI
Forgotten NY guest post

St. Columba’s Roman Catholic Church and School, Chelsea, NYC. Church was constructed in 1845 and its school next door in 1909. They were each demolished in 2026.

BACK in 2023 I went over to St. Columba’s to light a candle for my late godmother on the anniversary of her death. I tried the doors and found them locked. A few weeks later I went back and found them locked again. There was no sign to say the church had closed, just a little “welcome back” banner heralding St. Columba’s reopening after Covid. A little Googling revealed that St Columba’s had indeed closed quietly not long before. Apparently a canopy over the altar had fallen, prompting an immediate declaration that the building was in imminent danger of collapse and the Church had no option other than to sell the entire complex, including an adjacent school, convent and residence to a developer.

Three years later St. Columba’s is an empty lot, the latest in spate of demolitions clustered here. None of these has been as hard to watch as St. Columba’s. When six full city blocks were leveled for the construction of the Ladies Garment Workers’ Penn South houses in the 1960s, St. Columba Church and school were two of just a few buildings spared. Though its facade had lost some of its Gothic revival detail, the building remained a gathering place for 180 years, a relic of a time when the city’s population was about 370,000 and sermons might have dealt with slavery and the Mexican-American War.

Besides having been the alma-mater of Whoopi Goldberg, the adjoining school had the distinction of being the work of architect T.H. Poole, prolific designer of religious buildings. Its densely-ornamented neo-gothic facade made it something of a mini-Woolworth tower; it evoked Poole’s contemporary Church of St. Thomas the Apostle on East 118th St, and was a near twin of his Carmelite School on E29th St. St Thomas still stands: after the Landmarks Commission refused to protect it, a developer came along and restored the church and attached school, incorporating both into a new residential project. Poole’s Carmelite School however is long gone, and now so is its sister building at St. Columba. It remains unclear what will come next here but I bet we can venture a pretty good guess.