St. Monica's Church facade (York College Child and Family Center)
94-20 160th Street | also 94-43 160th Street | Jamaica | built 1974
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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.
- 1854
Father Anthony Farley arrives as pastor and plans a new brick church on Washington Street
Farley, born in County Cavan, Ireland, took charge of St. Monica's at age 40; he had studied in Montreal and trained for the priesthood at a Jefferson County, New York, seminary, the College and Seminary of St. Vincent de Paul. He planned a new church on five lots on Washington Street, now 160th Street: a French woman from New York donated four and he bought the fifth. A scholar of French Catholic writing, he later translated a Life of Saint Monica, published in 1885.
- 1856
St. Monica's goes up in the round-arched Early Romanesque Revival with a central tower
The brick basilica, about 49 by 97 feet, had a four-story entrance tower at the center of its three-bay front, with pilaster strips, corbel tables and round-arched openings. A marble plaque over the second-story window reads St. Monica, 1856. The commission ranked it among the earliest surviving Early Romanesque Revival buildings in New York and among the few Catholic churches in the city built in that style. An apse was added in 1891-93.
- 1857
Bishop Loughlin dedicates the new St. Monica's, raised by Danish mason Anders Peterson
Builders laid the cornerstone in 1856 under Farley's supervision. The contractor was Anders Peterson, a Jamaica master mason from Denmark who also ran a local grist mill and later did the masonry of the First Reformed and Grace Episcopal churches. John Loughlin, the first Bishop of Brooklyn, presided at the dedication of the $25,000 church.
“The corner stone of the building was laid in 1856 and on August 15, 1857, Bishop Loughlin, the first Bishop of Brooklyn, presided over the dedication of the church.”
- 1940
Mario M. Cuomo serves as an altar boy at St. Monica's
During the 1940s Mario M. Cuomo served as an altar boy at St. Monica's, the Jamaica parish church dedicated in 1857. By the time the parish closed in 1973, it was the oldest Catholic church in Queens.
“During the 1940s, Mario M. Cuomo was an altar boy for this church.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1973
St. Monica's holds its final Mass as its land goes to York College
The parish, by then about 90 percent African American, was forced out because its land was to become part of the York College campus. A last Mass of thanksgiving was said in June 1973. The church then sat empty and began to decay.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1975
Vandals strip the empty church of its windows, gutters and pews
Within two years of closing, the church was largely wrecked. Its leaded-glass windows were smashed, the copper gutters torn from the roof, holes hacked into the walls, and every pew hauled away. By 1978 the city housing department had marked it for demolition, an order put on hold while the Queens borough president's office and a local group, the Friends of Jamaica History, pushed to save it.
“By 1975, the church had been largely destroyed by vandalism and neglect.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1979
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates St. Monica's a city landmark
Six witnesses spoke in favor at a September 1978 hearing and none opposed. The commission noted that the city had taken the 123-year-old church in 1973 for the York College urban renewal site, and expected its open interior to adapt to college uses as a link to Jamaica's building tradition.
- 1998
St. Monica's walls and roof cave in after two days of heavy rain
Years of neglect after the parish left ended in collapse: following two days of torrential rainfall in 1998, the walls and roof of the abandoned landmark gave way. Only the brick front and bell tower survived to be reused later.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2003
York College breaks ground on a child care center built behind the old church front
The state-funded $4.7 million York College Child Care Center kept the two-story brick front and bell tower, the only remnants of the 1856 church, at the urging of the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Behind it rose a 10,000-square-foot steel and glass building with eight playrooms for up to 100 children, from infants to preschoolers, open 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. for day and night students.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- St. Monica's Church (Queens)Wikipedia
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