St. Joseph Church (Yorkville)
404 East 87th Street | Yorkville | 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.
- 1873
German-speaking Catholics of Yorkville win their own parish, with Joseph Durthaller as first pastor
In 1873 a delegation of German-speaking Catholics from Yorkville asked the Jesuits of St. Laurence O'Toole Church, now St. Ignatius Loyola, for a priest who spoke German. The Jesuits entrusted the work to Fr. Joseph Durthaller, and Archbishop John McCloskey established St. Joseph's as a German national parish that same year. Until then, the parish history says, the neighborhood's German Catholics had worshiped in the chapel of St. Joseph's Orphanage at Avenue A and 89th Street.
Source: stjosephsyorkville.org
- 1874
A modest brick church is dedicated for the new parish, later replaced on the same spot by the present church
The parish dedicated a modest brick church in 1874, and its own history calls St. Joseph's the mother church of Yorkville. The Archdiocese of New York took over the parish from the Jesuits in 1888, and its first archdiocesan pastor, Msgr. Anton Lammel, judged the church too small for his growing congregation. He chose to build a larger one in its place, and that is the church standing today.
Source: stjosephsyorkville.org
- 1895
Archbishop Corrigan dedicates the Romanesque Revival church by J. William Schickel
Architect J. William Schickel started the present church in 1894, and Archbishop Corrigan dedicated it on November 3, 1895. The Romanesque Revival building has an organ by the noted firm of Muller and Abel that is still in use, and the church also has a harpsichord.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1926
The bell tower is finished and a new parish school rises during Msgr. Gallus Bruder's pastorate
Msgr. Gallus Bruder was pastor from 1911 to 1943, a period the parish history calls probably the heyday of the German presence in Yorkville. During his tenure the parish put up a new school in 1925-26 and finished the top of the bell tower in 1926. Improvements were also made inside the church during his tenure, though only the ceiling paintings showing episodes from the life of St. Joseph survive.
Source: stjosephsyorkville.org
- 2008
Pope Benedict XVI presides over an ecumenical prayer service at St. Joseph's
St. Joseph's was chosen, in part because of the parish's German heritage, as the place where Pope Benedict XVI presided at an ecumenical prayer service on April 18, 2008, during his pastoral visit to New York. The church and Yorkville drew heavy media attention. A mosaic of the pope's coat of arms, installed in front of the sanctuary the next year, marks the visit.
Source: stjosephsyorkville.org
- 2015
Hungarian-language services begin at St. Joseph's after St. Stephen of Hungary closes
Once the Church of St. Stephen of Hungary nearby, home to the city's Hungarian worshipers, closed in August 2015, St. Joseph's began holding Hungarian services on September 6. The German-founded parish, which still celebrates a German Mass monthly, thus took on a second immigrant community.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
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