As I mentioned a week ago, in ‘A Little Detective Work’ (November 28), I have been looking intently at the Stations of the Cross in my home parish. When our church was built the pastor, Father  Saunders, did a lot of scavenging for the furnishings. The Stations came from Saint Thomas the Apostle Church in Harlem. Our Lady of Hope was built in 2005 and Saint Thomas had been condemned in 2003 by the Archdiocese of New York. So far the story makes sense.

The question that eventually occurred to me is this. If I am correct that the mysterious figure in Station 9, Jesus Falls the Third Time, is Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, why was she put there? There’s no currently obvious connection. Saint Thomas parish was founded in 1889 but the church wasn’t built until around 1905.

The parish history book referenced earlier, A Labor of Love, says that an artist, A. Sibel, who worked with the Mayer Glass studios, also did the stations. Mayer studios was the biggest purveyor of stained glass windows in the late 1800s and is still important. Hundreds of churches have Mayer windows and they have a distinctive design. 

Great, but that does not answer the question. I got as far as discovering that William Seton who was Elizabeth Seton’s grandson, and who lived in New York, died in 1905, but I haven’t found a connection to this church.

A cousin of his and hers, was the bishop of New York for a while in the middle 1800s. He was a convert and has an interesting story but that still doesn’t show a connection. I’m going to keep looking. 

Back in 2005 the ultimate fate of Saint Thomas the Apostle Church was still not quite settled. In 2023, the space has been deconsecrated; the rectory has been  made into a lovely apartment and studio for an artist and her family; the church itself is being offered as an event center and only the outer facade has been preserved.  

Here is some eye candy from the Mayer glass catalog of the 1930s.

And an astonishing bit of Mayer glass from a German church.

Here is the URL of an article on a non-secure blog … but it is a fascinating story about Saint Thomas and what has happened to it. Plus an old picture. http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2011/09/1907-church-of-st-thomas-apostle-no-260.html