Our Lady of Loreto is a pile of rubble

Mock funeral will be held Saturday for historic Brownsville church

October 13, 2017 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Gone, Gone, Gone: There's a hole in the ground where Our Lady of Loreto Church in Brownsville stood for more than a century. Eagle photo by Lore Croghan

Eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places

The coalition fought unsuccessfully to have the neoclassical Roman Renaissance-style church designated as a city landmark and adaptively reused as a community cultural center.

Catholic Charities Progress of Peoples Development Corp., which holds a long-term lease on the property, plans to construct low-income housing on the church site.

An 11th-hour legal challenge temporarily halted its demolition, but ultimately did not prevail.

The Catholic charity had signed an agreement with the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and other government agencies in 2010 that required the church building to be left intact and allowed Our Lady of Loreto’s rectory to be razed to make way for the construction of low-income apartments.

Both the church and the rectory had been declared eligible for listing on the State and National Registers of Historic Places.

But in a decision rendered last summer, Justice Ellen Spodek of the state Supreme Court in Brooklyn observed that the agreement made by the Catholic charitable group stipulated it should make good-faith efforts to preserve and adaptively reuse Our Lady of Loreto “should funding become available for its restoration.”
Funding to restore the church building did not become available, though, the judge noted in her decision.

Our Lady of Loreto was constructed as a refuge for Italian immigrants in an era when they were discriminated against by Catholics of other ethnicities in New York City. In some parishes, the Italians were required to sit in the basement or the back of the church, separated from other worshipers, during Mass.

Our Lady of Loreto’s architect, Adriano Armezzani, was an Italian immigrant. The other artists and artisans who collaborated in the church’s construction were Italian immigrants, too.