Building of the Day: 115 Throop Avenue

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: All Saints Roman Catholic Church
Address: 115 Throop Avenue, at Thornton and Flushing
Neighborhood: East Williamsburg
Year Built: 1894
Architectural Style: Neo-Gothic
Architect: Schickel & Ditmars
Other buildings by architect: Church of St. Ignatius Loyola and the Church of St. Monica, on the Upper East Side, Church of the Ascension, Upper West Side
Landmarked: No

There are quite a few Catholic churches, convents and schools in the Williamsburg/Bushwick/far Eastern Bedford Stuyvesant areas.

That’s because so many of the thousands of Germans who immigrated to Brooklyn in the mid to late 1800’s were Catholic. These people worked in the breweries and other industries in the area, and needed places to worship that were close to work and home.

All Saints was founded by German immigrants in 1867, but thirty years later, the expanding parish had outgrown the old church, and this one was begun in the same site. The church was formally dedicated in 1896.

Over the years, as the breweries closed and German Americans moved to other neighborhoods, the church gained an Italian congregation. They were, in turn, were replaced by the current Hispanic parishioners, a great deal of them from Mexico.

All Saints a fine neo-Gothic church in light colored brick built on a granite foundation. The trimmings are limestone, and terra-cotta is used for the tracery, columns and parapets.

The building is in the shape of a cross, standard Gothic church design, and the large tower soars 208′ into the sky, creating a striking local silhouette. It’s down the street from Woodhull Hospital, and near the elevated tracks of the J train, but a walk down this quiet street, is very isolated and quiet.

I haven’t met any Gothic structure I didn’t like, so I love this one. The modern combination of brick, mixed with the more ancient look of the terra-cotta is striking, and works well.

Since terra-cotta is so durable, the crispness of the Gothic quatrefoils in the windows and along the buttresses has endured,especially in the very classic Gothic doorway. The only thing this church needs is a name plate, as there are no signs on the church whatsoever.

I had to ask someone coming out of the building, and I later found one on the nearby school, next to a really beautiful parish house.

Schickel & Ditmars were a Manhattan firm that designed a great many Gothic style churches, and worked very closely with the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, designing churches, hospitals and office buildings.

They also did some residential architecture, and were well known in the German-American community.

In addition to their NY area churches, they also designed the Catholic Club in Manhattan, the original main building of St. Vincent’s Hospital in the Village, and the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Boston, site of Edward Kennedy’s funeral.

[Photos by Suzanne Spellen]