Church of St. Francis of Assisi
135 West 31st Street | also 133 West 31st Street | Midtown South | built 1920
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1844
Bishop McCloskey lays the cornerstone of the new St. Francis of Assisi church on West 31st Street
After the bishop closed St. John the Baptist Church during a dispute with its lay trustees, Father Zachary Kunz, a Hungarian Franciscan, asked for a new parish and bought nearby property. On May 9, 1844, Bishop John McCloskey laid the cornerstone for the new West 31st Street church. Kunz named it for St. Francis of Assisi, patron of peacemakers, and services began within a few months.
Source: stfrancisnyc.org
- 1892
Archbishop Corrigan blesses the new St. Francis church and consecrates its three altars
By 1890 Father Ludger Beck, the pastor, concluded that the parish needed a larger church and asked Archbishop Michael Corrigan for a $15,000 loan against an estimated $60,000 cost. The new church was dedicated on Sunday, July 17, 1892. Corrigan blessed it and consecrated three altars, and Archbishop Winand Wigger of Newark, who spent his childhood opposite the first church, gave the sermon and donated a large stained-glass window of St. Francis.
Source: stfrancisnyc.org
- 1928
Rudolph Margreiter's mosaic of the Mother of Jesus is installed, among the largest in the country
In 1928 Rudolph Margreiter's mosaic The Glorification of the Mother of Jesus was installed in the church. It is described as one of the largest mosaics in the United States.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1929
The friars start a daily breadline for hungry New Yorkers during the Great Depression
The parish's own history dates its daily breadline to 1929, begun in response to the Great Depression. It says the breadline has served the city's hungry every day since.
Source: stfrancisnyc.org
- 1961
Three new marble altars are dedicated, closing five years of renovation
In May 1961 three new marble altars were dedicated, bringing five years of heavy construction in the upper church to a close, according to the parish history. The work, planned in the late 1950s, also added new entrances on 31st and 32nd Streets, outdoor shrines and air-conditioning for the upper church.
Source: stfrancisnyc.org
- 1986
Fr. Mychal Judge is assigned to St. Francis and welcomes Dignity's AIDS ministry
The Franciscan friar Mychal Judge was posted to St. Francis of Assisi Church in 1986, the church where he had first met the friars, and he lived and worked there until he died. After the Vatican's October 1, 1986 document on pastoral care of gay people, many bishops, including Cardinal John O'Connor, banned the group Dignity from diocesan churches. Judge welcomed Dignity's AIDS ministry to St. Francis, which the friars controlled, partly sidestepping the cardinal's ban.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2001
Fr. Mychal Judge's funeral Mass draws 3,000 people, including Bill and Hillary Clinton
Some 3,000 mourners went to the funeral Mass for Father Mychal Judge at St. Francis on September 15, 2001. Judge was the Franciscan friar and fire department chaplain who died on September 11. Cardinal Edward Egan, the archbishop, presided, and Bill Clinton, then a former president, came with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. His body had been taken to the Engine 1/Ladder 24 firehouse opposite the friary on West 31st Street before the medical examiner.
Source: Wikipedia
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