After a four-year restoration set in motion by community groups and an anonymous $20 million donation, St. Brigid’s Church, built in 1848 on Avenue B and Eighth Street, has reopened.
EV Grieve done a great job chronicling the process and progress.
It’s a magnificent restoration, and the most inspiring part might be the vaulted ceiling above the nave, which suggests “an inverted ship’s hull—no accident, since it was built by shipwrights, who are remembered in sculpted faces in the roof-supporting corbels,” as this Bloomberg article explains.
These shipwrights were Irish immigrants who came to New York in coffin ships fleeing the Irish Potato Famine.
They settled in today’s far East Village, once the Dry Dock district, laboring in shipyards on the East River from Houston Street to East 12th Street.
St. Brigid is a fitting name for a house of worship called the “famine church”—she’s the patron saint of boatmen.
Too bad the original steeples couldn’t be restored, seen here in a 1928 NYPL photo.
Tags: Dry Dock District, East Village churches, Irish immigrants East Village, Irish Immigrants New York City, New York City churches, St. Brigid's and St. Emeric East Village, St. Brigid's Church Avenue B
Ephemeral New York 
February 19, 2013 at 6:25 pm |
[…] The “inverted ship’s hull” inside St. Brigid’s on Avenue B (Ephemeral New York) […]
September 14, 2013 at 6:29 am |
[…] St. Brigid’s Roman Catholic Church underwent an expensive (and ultimately beautiful) renovation from 2008 to 2012, church leaders didn’t have enough funds left over to put the church bell […]
February 17, 2016 at 4:13 pm |
[…] The upside-down ship’s hull in St. Brigid’s Church […]
November 7, 2016 at 3:59 am |
[…] were filled in, and row houses, shops, and churches (like the recently restored St. Brigid’s on Avenue B) went up for workers and their […]