Church of the Transfiguration

About this property

The Church of the Transfiguration is a Roman Catholic parish located at 25 Mott Street on the northwest corner of Mosco Street (formerly Park Street) in the Chinatown neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. The parish is under the authority of the Archdiocese of New York and is staffed by the Maryknoll order. The church was built in 1801 in the Georgian style of architecture for the Zion English Lutheran Church, a Lutheran congregation that subsequently converted en masse to the Protestant Episcopal Church. The church then became known as Zion Protestant Episcopal Church. It was rebuilt after a major fire in 1815 which gutted the church and 35 dwellings in the surrounding Five Points neighborhood. The church was rebuilt thanks to the effort of congregation member Peter Lorillard. The Episcopal congregation sold the building in 1853 to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, which transferred to this building the congregation of the "Church of the Transfiguration" which was then located on Chambers Street. The church is one of four on the Lower East Side built from Manhattan schist. The AIA Guide to New York City describes it as "[A] Georgian church with Gothic (small-paned double-hung) windows ... with Gothic tracery ... Dressed Manhattan schist makes neat building blocks, with brownstone detail." A copper-covered, octagonal bell tower designed by Henry Engelbert was added to the church building in 1868, when the Gothic windows are assumed to have been added as well. The church was designated a New York City landmark in 1966, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. The Church of the Transfiguration had its origins in 1827, when the Rev. Félix Varela y Morales purchased the former Episcopalian "Christ Church" on Ann Street to serve as a home for the fourth Catholic parish established on Manhattan. When the building on Ann Street became unsafe to use, in 1836 Father Varela purchased a former Scottish Presbyterian church on Chambers Street, renaming it the "Church of the Transfiguration", and his congregation moved there. The congregation had outgrown the Chambers Street church by 1853, leading to the purchase by the (then) Roman Catholic Diocese of New York of the larger church building on Mott Street to serve as a new home for the parish. The parish therefore has the unusual history of having been in three different locations in the city, and each time having been in a building originally built as a Protestant church. Over the years, it has continued to serve the Irish, Italian, and more recently Chinese immigrant communities. Today, this parish serves an almost entirely Chinese congregation, with Sunday Masses in English, Cantonese and Mandarin, with a Catholic School open to all religions. The Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers exclusively staff the parish as their order has historical roots in overseas missions to China in particular and the world in general. Among its former pastors was Bishop John W. Comber, M.M. (1967–1969), a Maryknoll Missionary who had served in Fushun.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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