OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL HELP
The Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help is an architectural landmark in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is located on 5th Avenue between 59th and 60th streets in the Sunset Park neighborhood and occupies about half the square block extending back to 6th Avenue, with the rectory and ancillary buildings occupying the remainder. The Basilica is visible for some distance, particularly from the Gowanus Expressway. It is popularly referred to by its initials, OLPH.
The basilica, founded and still staffed by the Redemptorists, is a Roman Catholic parish church of the Diocese of Brooklyn. It is dedicated to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, and serves as a pro-cathedral. The architect was Franz Joseph Untersee of Boston MA. As a double church, the basilica has two floors of worship, like the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi. The upstairs church was commonly only used to host weddings and special group services such as confirmation and communion, but has come back into more frequent use. For many years, mass in Spanish was held upstairs because of the large number of parishioners in attendance. The lower level is for smaller services. The first floor has been renovated many times in recent years. Its new modernized look is more inviting and welcoming to parishioners.
Because of its size, the Basilica hosts major diocesan services (e.g., ordinations)[1] that would otherwise be held at Brooklyn's other, considerably smaller basilica, the Cathedral Basilica of St. James. For the same reason, it also hosts sadder events; it is a venue-of-choice for the larger funerals of those who have fallen in the line of duty while in the service of the New York City Police Department and the New York City Fire Department.
At the time of its completion, the parish was largely Irish in character (as evidenced by the inscriptions on the memorial windows). It was built on what was known as Irish Hill. Some of the family names include Collins, Brennan, Wade, Connors, Burns, McCaffrey, Healy, and Coffey. There is still an Irish presence, but today it is predominantly Hispanic and Chinese. The Basilica enjoys large attendance, particularly on holidays such as Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday and Christmas.
The parish has an elementary school down the block on 6th Avenue and 59th and 60th Street. The elementary school celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2003. From 1956 until 1999 there was an OLPH Commercial High School for girls. Students at both were taught by the Sisters of St. Joseph, whose convent is on 59th Street and 6th Avenue. A rectory for the Redemptorist priests is on 59th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues.
The Basilica is served by the New York City Subway Fourth Avenue line 59th Street subway station (N and R Lines).
In 1892 the Redemptorists were serving in two parishes in Manhattan: at Most Holy Redeemer on East 3rd Street, and at St. Alphonsus parish on West Broadway. They were also conducting parish missions in New York area parishes. One of their earliest missions was in 1853, in the town of Flushing, Long Island, just six weeks after the Diocese of Brooklyn had been created.
In 1892 the pastor of St Alphonsus Church, Fr. Wayrieh, asked Bishop Charles E. McDonnell of Brooklyn to allow the Redemptorists to establish a mission church in Brooklyn. The bishop arranged with them to establish the church and form a new parish. On November 1, 1892 the Redemptorists purchased the city block bordered by 59th and 60th Streets and by 5th and 6th Avenues, on the hill (or ridge) overlooking the bay (the Narrows). The block cost forty thousand dollars.
At that time, 60th Street was the southern boundary of the city of Brooklyn. O.L.P.H. parish began at the southern edge of the city, which was a mostly rural area.
By March, 1893 all the arrangements and permissions were finalized and the parish began. It was already known that the new parish would be dedicated to Mary, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, although the church itself had not yet begun. On Easter Sunday, April 2, 1893, the first Mass was celebrated, in a house on 54th Street and 4th Avenue – the Morse family house. Forty people were at this first Mass of the parish. On April 22 the “infant church” was moved to the Neary family house on 5th Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets.
There were 85 families in the new parish when the cornerstone of the first church was laid, on October 29,1893. It was to be a frame church, 100 feet long and 40 feet wide, on Fifth Avenue between 59th and 60th Streets. Its seating capacity was 500 people, and cost $10,000. to build. The Fathers moved into the rectory behind the church, on 59th St. on December 7. The finished wooden church was dedicated in honor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help on January 14, 1894 by Bishop McDonnell.
On May 6 of that year, after the first parish mission, the priests distributed to everyone in church that day a leaflet containing a prayer to Mary Our Lady of Perpetual Help. They said the prayer together at the end of Mass, and thus began the devotion to Mary in the church with her name, a devotion – a perpetual novena – which continues today.
On December 16, 1894 a copy of the icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, a copy brought from Rome, was enthroned in the new church. The original icon dates back nearly a thousand years and is located in the church of St. Alphonsus on Via Merulana in Rome. It is known as a miraculous icon because of extraordinary grace and favors received by people who have knelt before this picture of Jesus and Mary to pray.
The icon you see here at O.L.P.H. was touched to the original before being brought to Brooklyn, in a symbolic gesture to ask Mary to watch over all who come here.
In 1902 Fr Daily began the project of building a parochial school, which opened on September 9, 1903. Our Lady of Perpetual Help School was entrusted to the care of the Sisters of St. Joseph, who lived on its top floor until their convent was completed.