When the Trinity Church in Albany started to buckle and crumble, there was an outcry. “Save the church,” we shouted. “It’s part of the neighborhood. And if we can’t save the church, let’s at least save those stained glass windows that might have been forged by Louis Comfort Tiffany himself.”
When St. Patrick’s Church in Watervliet was to meet the wrecking ball, there was an outcry. “Save the church,” we shouted. “We were married there, we worshiped there. It’s part of our heritage. We don’t need another Price Chopper there.”
There was outcry each time a church turned from building to rubble.
And yesterday, when news broke that part of a wall of the Church of the Holy Innocents in Albany collapsed, there was … nothing. Not a word. Not a shout.
Heck, I don’t think the average Capital District resident could find the Church of the Holy Innocents on a map without the use of Google Earth.
The Church of the Holy Innocents was built in Albany’s Arbor Hill in the 1850’s, and served parishioners for many generations. Eventually the congregation merged with another house of worship on Clinton Avenue, and this building – which was eventually placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 – was left to rot.
And I do mean rot.
This is the photo that accompanies the Church’s Wikipedia page.
Oh yeah, you mumble. That church. The ivy-overgrown building at the corner of North Pearl and Colonie Streets. It had a name?
Yes it did have a name. And it had parishoners and baptisms and weddings and confirmations and funerals, just like the other churches in the Capital District. And now it’s starting to fall apart.
Last night, TU reporter Jordan Carleo-Evangelist noted that a portion of the southwest corner of the building had collapsed. Immediately crews arrived on the scene to stabilize the structure as best they could. But in its current condition… this building’s days are numbered.
Sadly, if a few bricks tumble from its walls… with no one to champion the building’s cause… the only parishioners that will visit it, unfortunately, are the Holy Church of the Wrecking Balls and Our Holy Lady of St. Demolition.
And that’s a horrible option.
Even a few weeks ago, when I started experimenting with infrared film, I took a few pictures of the Church of Holy Innocents. And despite its Gothic beauty, it still looked about as haunted and as miserable as any former house of worship could.
This is no longer a house of worship. It’s barely a house of anything.
I wanted so desperately to hear that someone has come to the building’s rescue; a white knight, a holy angel who would take the facility and spend millions to restore it and provide it (and the surrounding community) with a new holy home.
But I don’t hear a sound.
At some point, unfortunately, I suspect that the building known as the Church of Holy Innocents will cease to exist. This is Albany, where sometimes I feel that the city bird is the wrecking ball.
I wish there was more of an outcry, more of a call to arms, more of a grass-roots effort to move the grass and remove the roots.
But, sadly, I don’t hear a sound.
What can you do in moments like this?
Part of me hopes that the “what we can do” isn’t just watching the slow deterioration and collapse of another historic downtown Albany facility. This is a community that still holds a grudge against Nelson Rockefeller for turning twelve city blocks into the Empire State Plaza 50 years ago.
Right. These are the same Capital District residents that would tear down the Arnoff Building and throw Nipper into the junkyard if it meant building a Wegmans on that site.
And yet… silence and ennui.
A church’s wall collapses. The weight of two centuries of prayer finally gives out. Eventually the wreckers will arrive.
And a few months later… a vacant lot.
That building deserved better than this.
The faith it embodied certainly deserved better than this.
We all deserve better than this.
But, unfortunately…
We’re not getting any better with this.
The answer is that the demolition by neglect is so rampant in this city that addressing any one building is too quixotic.
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Maybe a boffo site for a Family Video Store like what happened in Fulton?
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You should see the church on Green Street in the South End. Green Street and Westerlo. Also being destroyed by neglect. Could have been something a few times in the past ten years or so but fighting city hall is so complicted, it is easier to do nothing.
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Barely related, only because I tried to carve out a map of Albany’s neighborhoods as a GIS project… Arbor Hill is generally bordered on the north by Livingston, so this is a block away. North of Arbor Hill is Dudley Heights, but that’s bounded on the east by N. Pearl. The area east of Pearl and north of Livingston, including the “warehouse district” and the I-90/Rt 9 interchange, I couldn’t find a name for (aside from, I guess, “warehouse district”). North Albany picks up at Emmett Street.
Anyway, a bigger crime is the row of homes just down the hill from the church. You’re familiar, I think you’ve taken some photos from the trestle there? Most people probably don’t even realize people are living there.
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Maybe the collapse of the Historic Preservation Movement mirrors the collapse of the sense of community itself? Eight years of a damaging recession has left few with hope or resources… to dream. To consider the future. And technology has given us cyber communities that are much more attractive than the one’s we actually inhabit.
There’s a reason for why things happen. And this is frightening.
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My father knew the woman who owned it in the 1980s and visited it several times. I think she tried living there for a while, but you really have to be independently wealthy to afford such a restoration on your own.
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“Maybe the collapse of the Historic Preservation Movement mirrors the collapse of the sense of community itself? […] There’s a reason for why things happen.”
Irony isn’t quite the word for the building being put on the register in ’78, shortly after I-787 was built (started in the early ’60s, completed in the ’70s). Look on the map. It’s no surprise that communities wither when they’re sandwiched between massive freeway ramps. It’s a development and planning philosophy with a complete lack of respect for urban communities (the ESP is another egregious example) that’s largely responsible for getting us here. Show of hands, anyone actually live in an urban area? Kind of a sensitive subject for me. To keep it on topic I’ve always liked the fact that Chuck makes an effort to photograph some of the urban spaces in the capital region. Places where many of our neighbors live are often underappreciated while “pretty” subjects like the Adirondacks and abandoned warehouses are focused (pun intended) on instead.
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We travel and visit churches, temples and mosques in other countries. Here in Albany, these long-abandoned houses of worship are left to rot or torn down to build grocery stores or parking lots. An indictment of our community’s lack of any sense of history, architecture or concern for the legacy we’re creating for those who’ll follow us. Thanks for writing, Chuck.
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The pictures are of different buildings. Are there two churches at the site?
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Maureen – the first picture was taken in 2011 by another photographer. The second picture was taken a couple of weeks ago by me, and shows the rear chapel of the Church of Holy Innocents.
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It is an architectural gem, designed and built by a “top” architect, with a rich history. Seems to me that the City is at fault for not keeping the owner’s feet to the fire to maintain, at the very least, the building’s structural integrity…..especially in light of the experience with Trinity church. And is there is a “hole” in the law that doesn’t hold a building owner responsible for structural integrity, then the city is long overdue in amending its charter/local laws, etc.
I do wonder if its location, across from public housing, abutting a railroad and adjacent to Hope House, was a factor in “not caring” about this building in this neighborhood. One wonders why the last owner/occupant did not take steps to maintain it at all.
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And of course, we’ve been aware of this issue for years and years….this is from 2009, republished in 2011
http://blog.timesunion.com/roberts/hope-for-albanys-decaying-churches/45/
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