The Immaculate Conception Church and School

 

Church: 389
East 150th Street between Melrose and Courtlandt avenues

Henry Bruns

School: 378
East 151 Street at Melrose Avenue Anthony F.A. Schmitt 1901

The building known as the Immaculate Conception Church (officially, the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church) is located at the center of a complex of Roman Catholic religious structures. Today, it is found at one edge of the oldest and second busiest shopping center in The Bronx (the Hub) and at another edge of a residential neighborhood that takes its name from the nineteenth century suburban village called Melrose.

 

In the middle of the nineteenth century, an increasing number of immigrant Germans came into the area. They had fled a failed revolution in their homeland and starvation caused by a severe drought. In the surrounding villages, many became small businessmen, brewers and piano manufacturers. A large number of them were Catholic. It was for them that the new Immaculate Conception parish was created. In 1853, the first church was dedicated.

 

Over three decades later, the area had become urbanized. Trolley cars connected the neighborhood with northern Manhattan over the Third Avenue Bridge. Plans were already underway to extend the Third Avenue El northward and talk had begun for digging the city’s first subway with stations for both facilities nearby at 149th Street and Third Avenue. The population grew in anticipation of greater access. With that, there was a need for a larger church.

 

The cornerstone of the second church was laid by Archbishop Corrigan on April 5, 1887. This red brick building is designed in the Romanesque Revival style popular at the time. Its central feature was a soaring 125-foot centrally placed tower surmounted by a slim tapering copper spire that was the tallest in The Bronx. Over the decades, the spire with its green patina could be spotted from many blocks away. The church is ornamented with leaf-shaped decorated projections and small towers. The façade has round arched openings, stone framework on the edge of the roof for hanging bells, and small blind arcades. The church’s interior can seat 1,600 people.

 

By the time the church was built, the parish was in the hands of the Redemptorist fathers. One of them, Father John B Leibfritz, added a brick rectory in 1894 on the corner of Melrose Avenue in a similar Romanesque Revival style with projecting central and end pavilions and a finely detailed corbelled brick cornice. A convent for the Sisters of Charity was added to the west of the church in 1907. It has projecting end sections with gables flanking an entrance bay topped by two dormers. The school, added behind the rectory in 1901, is designed in the then popular Beaux Arts style.

 

In the years following World War I, the German population in the area began to move elsewhere. Within a few years after the end of World War II, the area was filled with Puerto Ricans, who were less affluent than the Germans who preceded them. Thus, when the soaring spire of the Immaculate Conception Church showed structural problems that could endanger the rest of the building and possibly injure passersby if it toppled down, it was removed. Residents deplored the loss of such a prominent landmark, but church authorities pleaded that they lacked the funds to replace it. They did promise, however, that if they did obtain proper funding, they would be eager to restore that soaring spire.

 

Lloyd Ultan