Our Lady of Loreto is in court

From AM-NY:

It has arrived in the form of a showdown between a faith-based group determined to level a 109-year-old church to erect affordable housing and residents who want to preserve their neighborhood’s patrimony while providing a hub for Brownsville culture.

Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Bernard Graham issued a temporary stop to the demolition of the magnificent, albeit deteriorating, Our Lady of Loreto Roman Catholic church on April 26.

A final decision on the historic architectural gem is expected to be handed down on May 9.

Catholic Charities Progress of Peoples Development Corporation (CCPOP), which leases the site from the Diocese of Brooklyn, wants to demolish the 1908 Italian Renaissance church at Sackman and Pacific streets to erect an unknown number of “energy-efficient units for low-income families” in a city where almost 60,000 people are homeless.

Members of the Brownsville Cultural Coalition and others long to landmark the church, which was closed to parishioners around 2008, and repurpose the shrine built by an all-Italian team of craftsmen into a cultural center for residents woefully short in community spaces for the arts.

Housing is important, said Miriam Robertson, executive director of the Brownsville Cultural Coalition, but Brownsville also needs to honor and preserve an important and elegant monument to its immigrant roots and history.

The pro se lawsuit that resulted in the current stay of demolition charges that multiple defendants failed to abide by a 2010 “letter of resolution” concerning the property. The letter of resolution stipulates “the Church itself shall not be demolished, reconstructed or damaged,” and was signed by the then CCPOP CEO and other parties. The church, said the resolution, “is not on the portion of the site of the modified project” slated for homes.

The NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, said a commission spokeswoman, “has carefully reviewed this building several times over the past few years and each time determined not to advance it for further consideration due to a lack of support from critical community stakeholders, including the Council member,” for the district, Rafael Espinal.

Assembly Member wants historic Brooklyn church saved

From the Brooklyn Eagle:

On Tuesday, state Assemblymember Latrice Walker called on Brooklyn's Catholic hierarchy to withdraw its demolition application for a historic church in the Ocean Hill section of Brownsville, Our Lady of Loreto.

At a press conference outside the shuttered century-old church at 124 Sackman St., Walker (D-Brownsville) urged Catholic officials to work with the community and turn Our Lady of Loreto into a much-needed cultural center.

Assemblymember Latrice Walker, at the microphone, calls for a halt to Our Lady of Loreto's demolition.Assemblymember Latrice Walker, at the microphone, calls for a halt to Our Lady of Loreto's demolition.

“Partner with our neighborhood,” Walker said.

“Let's invest in the people in this community as well as its infrastructure.”

Last week, Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens CEO Msgr. Alfred LoPinto announced “there is no viable use for the structure” and it will be torn down “to provide housing for families in need.”

Our Lady of Loreto will be spared

From the Daily News:

David has beaten Goliath in Brownsville.

A coalition of community activists, politicians and an Italian-American group is celebrating after the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn this week changed its mind about demolishing Our Lady of Loreto Church, sources said.

"It means we're going to finally serve the needs of the community," said Patricia Deans, 69, director of the Brownsville Heritage Center, which helped lead the fight against tearing down the church, located on Sackman and Pacific Sts.

Deans and others have recommended the church be renovated and converted into a community center - an approach the diocese has decided to take, according to sources briefed on the decision.

"The neighborhood needs this. ... There's no community center here; this would be the first," said Deans.

The 102-year-old church, once a pillar in the former Italian-American neighborhood, has been closed for two years. The diocese wanted to tear it down and let a nonprofit developer build 88 units of affordable housing on the site.

But a group of activists proposed an alternative $21 million plan that called for converting the church into a community center and building 102 units of affordable housing.

And the Landmarks Preservation Commission should be taking action any day now...

Diocese begins destroying historic church

From the NY Times:

Workers for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn have removed the dozen towering stained-glass windows from a beloved church built a century ago by Italian immigrants, prompting protests from preservationists who consider the building an important artifact – and who consider demolition imminent.

The windows from Our Lady of Loreto Church on Sackman Street in Brownsville were packed and placed in storage on Tuesday and Wednesday, said Monsignor Kieran Harrington, the spokesman for the diocese. But he would not confirm whether demolition was imminent, saying only that the diocese’s plan to begin building housing on the ground under the church remained unchanged and that the project was scheduled to begin in June.

“This building is a treasure,” said Frank Sciame, a prominent New York builder whose well-regarded restoration projects have included the Morgan Library and Museum, the New Victory Theater and Central Synagogue in Manhattan, and who recently got involved in trying to save Our Lady of Loreto.

“A 100-year-old building like this should not be demolished,” he said. “In Europe, that’s a young building.”

Before news of the stained-glass windows’ removal, Mr. Sciame, a member and former chairman of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, had scheduled separate meetings next week with officials in the diocese and the mayor’s office.

He said he planned to keep both appointments.

Why isn't the Landmarks Preservation Commission designating this historic church like they did for the West Park Presbyterian Church on the Upper West Side?

Do Italians have enough "clout" to save historic church?

From the NY Times:

Over the past decade, as Catholic officials in New York have closed underused churches and schools, there have been many battles. About a dozen churches have been demolished, and at least a dozen more are in limbo, draped for demolition while parishioners mount campaigns to reopen them.

Yet this fight is different. Former parishioners do not pretend that the neighborhood can support Our Lady of Loreto, which has been closed for more than a year.

Instead, they have gathered behind a proposal by a loose coalition of Italian-American advocates and African-American leaders, including the developer Jeffrey Dunston, to convert the church into an arts pavilion and community center. The culture center would be the anchor for 90 to 100 units of low-income housing, a few more than in the church’s plan. Mr. Dunston, chief executive of the nonprofit Northeast Brooklyn Housing Development Corporation, has built hundreds of low- and moderate-income housing units in the neighborhood over the past 15 years.

But church officials say their own plan is “shovel ready,” awaiting formal go-aheads from city and state financing agencies. The plan offered by Mr. Dunston and Mr. Piazza lacks financing, they said, and underestimates the cost of converting an aging church into a community center.

Last week, Bishop DiMarzio extended an olive branch, offering to insert some of the church’s outdoor statues into the facade of one of the new apartment buildings.

Flavia Alaya, an architectural historian who has been working to preserve the 1908 church, called the proposal “grotesque.”

Ms. Alaya, who has studied the works of the church’s architect, Adriano Armezzani, and its builders, Antonio and Gaetano Federici, called Our Lady of Loreto one of the finest examples of a Roman Renaissance style embraced by Italian-American artists at the turn of the 20th century in an effort to introduce neoclassical architecture to American cities.

She pleaded with Bishop DiMarzio in a letter last month to cancel the “irreversible demolition of this extraordinary century-old church” while Mr. Piazza and Mr. Dunston arrange their financing. And she wrote to a Vatican commission that oversees historic preservation, which promised to review the case.

A similar battle was recently won by a coalition of Latino parishioners, Irish-American organizations and the serendipity of an anonymous donor who gave $20 million to save St. Brigid’s Church, in the East Village, which was built by Irish immigrants in the 1840s.

“This will be the test of whether Italian-American clout is equal to that,” Ms. Alaya said.