BY DENNIS LYNCH | A hotelier bought three lots of Church land, including the St. Vincent de Paul Church on W. 23rd St., from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York for $50.4 million earlier this month, the Real Deal reported. The sale ends a years-long battle parishioners fought with the Church that went all the way to the highest Vatican court in Rome to block the sale of the almost 150-year-old Church building. Buyer Jeffrey Dagowitz purchased two Church lots on 24th St. along with the church. He purchased a four-story inn next door to the church last year and filed demolition permits shortly after, although the Department of Buildings has not yet approved his application. The previous owners filed permits for a 35-story tower there in 2014 and Dagowitz also had plans to build a tower there when he bought it, according to the Real Deal.
The zoning of the lots are a mix of C6-3X commercial and M1-6 manufacturing — the church is zoned for both, the bed and breakfast for commercial, and the W. 24th St. lots are zoned for manufacturing. The commercially zoned lots allow for large hotels, departments stores, corporate headquarters, and entertainment facilities in high-rise mixed-use building, although such zoning has maximum building heights and those buildings must conform to the existing neighborhood character, according to the New York City Dept. of City Planning.
An Archdiocese spokesman said earlier this year that a “miniscule amount” of money from the sale would go to the Vatican, and most of the money would go to churches where Saint Vincent’s former parishioners moved onto and to nearby parishes, according to the Wall Street Journal. Saint Vincent de Paul (123 W. 23rd St., btw. Sixth & Seventh Aves.) closed its large doors in 2013. It drew French-speaking Catholics from all around the city, particularly French-speaking Haitians, people from other French-speaking islands, and French diplomats in the city. The church also operated a soup kitchen — a significant loss for the neighborhood, said one W. 23rd St. resident who wished not to be named. “I think this is really something quite important to the neighborhood, not just from a religious or Catholic point of view, but for the services that were provided to the needy,” he said. “I doubt there’s going to be a soup kitchen in the basement of the new building.” Dagowitz did not respond to requests for comment regarding his plans for the properties.
The Archdiocese of New York — which spans Manhattan, the Bronx, Staten Island, and seven counties north of the city — first identified Saint Vincent as a church to close or merge with another in 2007, along with 21 others around the diocese. The building was deteriorating and its small congregation meant it couldn’t support itself financially, an Archdiocese spokesperson said. Former St. Vincent parishioners petitioned the Catholic Church to save the church and took their case all the way to the Vatican, but the Catholic Church’s highest court, the Apostolic Signatura, effectively sealed its fate in February when it decided not to hear another appeal from them. Parishioners also filed an application to landmark the church with the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 2008, and had the support of Community Board 4, Assemblymember Richard Gottfried, and even former French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who wrote to then-mayor Michael Bloomberg in support of the church, but the Commission denied the application. “We found that the existing façade, a neo-Classical façade that replaced the original Romanesque Revial façade in 1939, was designed by a little-known architect and lacked architectural distinction,” a Commission spokesperson said.
The Archdiocese earlier refused to accept a listing in the State and National Historic Register. The Archdiocese merged it with the nearby Church of Saint Columba on W. 25th St., although many of the French-speaking parishioners went over to Notre Dame parish in Morningside Heights. The archdiocese merged Saint Columba with the nearby Guardian Angel last year. The church relocated many of the religious and historical items in St. Vincent to Notre Dame parish, and the rest to storage for possible future use by other parishes, according to an Archdiocese spokesperson. September’s terror bombing on W. 23rd St. damaged some of the church’s stained glass windows, forcing the church to remove them and board up the windows.
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