Or “French colony,” as this New York Times headline announces from a 1902 article. Mostly it was centered in Manhattan’s West 20s and 30s.
“The French colony is almost as old as the settlement which has grown into the present city of New York, French Huguenots having been among the early settlers of Manhattan,” reported the Times.
“But the French colony has long since lost its Huguenot character and is now largely Catholic, maintaining the Churches of St. Vincent de Paul in West 23rd Street and of Jean Baptiste in East 76th Street.”
St. Vincent de Paul, founded in 1857, still offers mass in French.
Among the other institutions anchoring the district were the Cercle Francaise de l’Harmonie, on West 26th Street, a social hub.
A battalion of the Guards of Lafayette, with headquarters on West 25th Street, “keeps alive national traditions among young Frenchmen in New York.”
As for young French women, they had the Jeanne d’Arc Home, described as a home for “friendless French girls.” They still rent rooms to women today.
The French Benevolent Society, French Hospital, an orphanage, and several professional groups representing French chefs, waiters, and musicians also made their home in the neighborhood—now Chelsea, which has long since lost any international flavor.
Tags: Church of St. Vincent de Paul, French Benevolent Society, French district New York, friendless French girls, Jeanne D'Arc home, New York in 1902, New York's ethnic neighborhoods
Ephemeral New York 
January 17, 2011 at 4:08 pm |
st jean’s, where i was a boy scout, is still administered by its paris-founded congregation:
http://www.blessedsacrament.com/mission/whoweare.html
January 17, 2011 at 5:22 pm |
I’ve been to classical music concerts at St. Jean’s. It’s quite lovely and has a strangely small-town parish feel.
January 18, 2011 at 2:45 am |
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Charlie Vázquez. Charlie Vázquez said: RT @wmclarkassoc: When Manhattan had a French neighborhood http://goo.gl/5dbsP […]
February 9, 2011 at 9:39 pm |
My grandmother stayed at Jeanne d’Arc Home when she came to America in the 1910s.
March 5, 2014 at 2:43 am |
There was a noted French Quarter in the 1870’s in the area later demolished to build Washington Square Village to south east of Washington Square http://www.unz.org/Pub/Century-1879nov-00001
November 16, 2015 at 6:26 am |
[…] Like so many ethnic neighborhoods, this French Quarter didn’t last. By the turn of the century, the city’s small French colony relocated to West Chelsea. […]
July 18, 2016 at 6:51 pm |
I was born in the French Hospital 1942