St. Jean Baptiste Roman Catholic Church, also known as the Église St-Jean-Baptiste, is a Catholic parish church in the Archdiocese of New York at the corner of Lexington Avenue and East 76th Street in the Lenox Hill neighborhood of the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. The parish was established in 1882 to serve the area's French Canadian immigrant population and remained the French-Canadian National Parish until 1957. It has been staffed by the Fathers of the Blessed Sacrament since 1900.Lafort, Remigius The Catholic Church in the United States of America: Undertaken to Celebrate the Golden Jubilee of His Holiness, Pope Pius X. Volume 3: The Province of Baltimore and the Province of New York, Section 1: Comprising the Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Brooklyn, Buffalo and Ogdensburg Together with some Supplementary Articles on Religious Communities of Women.. (New York City: The Catholic Editing Company, 1914), p.337.
Financier Thomas Fortune Ryan, a Catholic convert in his teens, bankrolled its construction. It was designed by Nicholas Serracino, an Italian architect practicing in New York, who, inspired by the Italian Mannerists, p.169 combined elements of the Italian Renaissance Revival and Classical Revival architectural styles, Seracino won first prize for the design at the Esposizione Internazionale delle Industrie e del Lavoro in Turin, Italy in 1911. It is his only surviving church in the city.
The church is one of the few Catholic churches in New York City with a dome, and only one of two – the other being St. Patrick's Cathedral – with stained glass windows from the glass studios of Chartres. The building was designated a city landmark in 1969, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 along with its rectory. From 1995 to 1996 the interior and exterior were both restored and renovated.
Started in 1882 in a rented hall above a stable, the congregation has been through three buildings at two locations. St. Jean Baptiste High School was started on the grounds as an elementary school by nuns of the Congregation of Notre Dame in 1886. In the late 19th century, an exposure by a visiting priest of a relic of St. Anne, intended for one night, grew into a three-week event during which many miracle cures were alleged by thousands of pilgrims who crowded the church; as a result, the church now has its own shrine to the saint, which led to a failed effort to get it designated a basilica. In 1900 it passed from the control of the founding Fathers of Mercy to the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, who introduced Eucharistic adoration as a worship style.
Architecture The church is located on the east side of Lexington Avenue at 76th Street. The building takes up most of the lot, with the rectory on the south side, facing East 75th Street. () The area is densely developed. St. Jean Baptiste High School, run by the church, is on the other side of 75th Street. Lenox Hill Hospital is nearby.
Main building Exterior The building, which opened in the spring of 1913, is faced in limestone. Its west (front) facade is rich in ornament. The main entrance is located in a pedimented portico with full entablature on a high plinth supported by four Corinthian columns. This design is echoed with smaller pediments on each of the side entrances above carved festoon and scroll motifs.
Above a broad cornice, twin bell towers rise to a total height of at the corners. Their lower stages with canted corners have round-arched openings framed by pilasters. Above them an open circle of Corinthian columns supports a ribbed dome, topped by a smaller version of the top with a cross. These are echoes of the larger dome in the middle of the church that rises to . Between the two towers, on the parapet, a statue of angels supporting a globe echoes the pediment below. The gabled, gently pitched roofs are sheathed in copper.
On either side of the front facade, projecting entrance bays with windows are topped with a statue of an angel blowing a trumpet. The side elevations, of which only the north is visible from the street, have high round-arched windows and continue the cornice at the roofline. Pediments similar to those on the front grace the second story above the windows on either end of the transept.
Interior Inside, the barrel-vaulted nave is separated from the vaulted aisles by an arcade of tall Corinthian columns; the vault springs from the entablature. All the vaults, ribs and arches are richly decorated with Florentine-style reliefs. The column capitals and fluting are also gilded. The center of the nave vault has trompe-l'œil paintings of the heavens; an elaborate Florentine-style floral pattern decorates the interior of the dome.
Against the apse triforium on the east wall of the church stands the high altar with a mosaic half-dome, statues, and smaller bas-relief sculptures. A shrine devoted to St. Anne, mother of Mary, is located here. A six-foot-tall statue depicting her and a young Mary resides in the shrine. A relic of Saint Anne, a piece of the bone of her arm, was brought to New York by Monsignor Marquis from Saint Anne d'Apt in France in May 1885 and placed in an antique reliquary on the right side of the shrine which was newly gilded at the time of the renovation of the shrine. The gold dolphin supporting the relic of Saint Anne was crafted in 1997 by Armand Guior. There are many stories of miraculous healings associated with believers who come to worship St. Anne in the presence of her relics. The theme of the stained glass window in the shrine is the Old Testament. The Paschal Lamb is on the left and the Ark of the Covenant is on the right of the shrine.. To the left is an altar to Mary of Carrara marble; to the right is a similar one honoring St. Joseph. At the transept corners are smaller altars to Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament founder St. Peter Julian Eymard, with a relic in a case below; the other corner's altar is to St. Anthony of Padua. The walls and ceilings are otherwise decorated with paintings in the Baroque style.
The stained glass windows and high altar were brought to New York from Chartres, France and Italy, respectively, following World War I. On three levels, from the dome to the nave, the windows portray the Twelve Apostles, scenes from the Old Testament which prefigure the Christian sacrament of the Eucharist, and events in the life and ministry of Jesus, including the Last Supper and the institution of the Eucharist and the Easter appearance of Christ to the disciples at Emmaus. The high altar is tall. A team of artisans accompanied the various pieces of the altar from Italy and reassembled it in the sanctuary.
Under the dome is the altar table, made of white marble. At the center of the frontal is a Christogram, IHS, from the first three letters of Jesus (ΙΗΣΟΥΣ) in Greek. The pews, choir stalls, and confessionals are of oak and are elaborately carved. Eucharistic images, especially wheat shocks and clusters of grapes, are prominent throughout the building.
Associated structures The Rev. A. Letellier, rector, had a five-story brick and stone rectory at 170–190 East 76th Street and 1067 Lexington Avenue built in 1911 to designs by Nicholas Serracino of 1170 Broadway for $80,000. The rectory is also an Italian Renaissance-style palazzo. Five stories high, it is faced in white brick with granite steps leading down to 76th Street. The seven-bay north (front) facade features limestone voussoirs crowning each window. The end bays project slightly and are set off with large pilasters. The ground floor is rusticated. Limestone string courses are above the second and fourth stories, with a plain entablature and overhanging cornice at the roofline. There have been few alterations to the exterior. The interior, by contrast, has been extensively remodeled over time. Only the oak woodwork remains from the original building.
The Most Rev. Pat. J. Hayes had a four-story brick school with a tile roof at 163–173 East 75th built in 1925 to designs by Robert J. Reiley of 50 East 41st Street for $300,000. A five-story brick brothers apartment building at 194 East 76th Street, was built in 1930 to designs by Robert J. Reiley of 50 East 41st Street for $70,000 to 90,000. A five-story brick sisters apartment house at 163–175 East 75th Street and 170–198 East 76th Street and 1061–1071 Lexington Avenue was built in 1931 to designs by Robert J. Reiley of 50 East 41st Street for $125,000.Office for Metropolitan History , "Manhattan NB Database 1900–1986," (Accessed December 25, 2010).
History From its origins in a rented hall above a stable, p.212-213 with an almost exclusively French Canadian congregation, St. Jean Baptiste has grown to be one of New York's most distinctive Catholic churches. It has been through three buildings in two locations and under the care of two different orders of priests.
1841–82: Establishment of parish In the early 19th century, one in every nine New Yorkers was of French descent. Most were Huguenots, Protestant refugees from the French Revolution, but there were some Catholics. In 1841, Bishop de Forbin-Janson, on a missionary tour to the United States for the Fathers of Mercy, lamented that French-American Catholics in New York City had not been as devoted to raising churches in their national customs as Irish and Italian immigrants had. The community responded to this challenge, and accordingly the first Church of St. Vincent de Paul was opened the next year on Canal Street.
That church grew, and moved north to 23rd Street in 1868. A French Canadian immigrant community had begun to flourish in Yorkville at that time, and found it trying to make the trip downtown for services. A missionary to this community found that services closer to home would be beneficial, similar to those the Jesuits at what is now St. Ignatius Loyola had organized for Yorkville's Germans. The order's provincial gave his support for the establishment of a national parish, and a meeting of the immigrants' St. Jean Societé in 1881 raised $12 ($ in contemporary dollars) to that end. This is considered the beginning of the church's history.
A chapel was established in a rented hall above a stable on East 77th Street. The constant noise from the horses downstairs earned the chapel the nickname "Crib of Bethlehem" from congregants. A few months later, Cardinal John McCloskey, Archbishop of the Diocese of New York and the first American cardinal, granted permission to build a church, formalizing the parish. The new parish was able to raise $14,000 ($ in contemporary dollars) to buy a property on the north side of East 76th Street in 1882. By the end of the year Coadjutor Archbishop (later full Archbishop) Michael Corrigan had blessed the new building's cornerstone.
Napoleon LeBrun's design called for a simple Gothic Revival church building, long by wide, with room for 600. Its projected cost was $20,000 ($ in contemporary dollars) but it soon ran into difficulties when problems with using the "crib of Bethlehem" forced the use of the unfinished church's basement during Lent in 1883. Archbishop Corrigan had to take title to the church to save it.
1882–1900: First church and St. Anne's shrine
The new church was successful not only with its intended French Canadian community, but with all Catholics on the Upper East Side. Many were servants in the nearby houses of the city's wealthier residents and had to report for their jobs early, thus appreciating a nearby church where they could first attend Mass. In 1886, nuns from the Congregation of Notre Dame, founded in colonial Montreal in the mid-17th century, came to establish an elementary school.