Building of the Day: 192-194 Bergen Street
Brooklyn, one building at a time. Name: Former factory, then St. Cyprian’s Protestant Episcopal Church, then Sacred Heart Chapel, now private home. Address: 192-194 Bergen Street Cross Streets: Corner Bond Street Neighborhood: Boerum Hill Year Built: 1920s Architectural Style: Simple 19th-early 20th century brick factory Architect: Unknown Landmarked: Yes, part of Boerum Hill Historic District…
Brooklyn, one building at a time.
Name: Former factory, then St. Cyprian’s Protestant Episcopal Church, then Sacred Heart Chapel, now private home.
Address: 192-194 Bergen Street
Cross Streets: Corner Bond Street
Neighborhood: Boerum Hill
Year Built: 1920s
Architectural Style: Simple 19th-early 20th century brick factory
Architect: Unknown
Landmarked: Yes, part of Boerum Hill Historic District (1973)
The story: Boerum Hill is one of Brooklyn’s older neighborhoods, with much of its residential housing stock built just before and just after the Civil War. The two houses next door to this building were built in 1860, as were the two similar houses that once stood on this double lot. Sometime in the 1920s, the houses at 192 and 194 Bergen Street were torn down, and this plain, small factory building was constructed. Whatever this factory produced is lost to history, I could find no record of its products or ownership.
There were few zoning restrictions back then, and factories often turn up in residential neighborhoods, especially those next door to commercial areas anyway. This one is pretty isolated, in spite of the proximity to factory space on Atlantic Avenue, as well as nearby Gowanus. It is also in a densely populated area, with no commercial parking on site. Perhaps that’s why it didn’t stay a factory for very long. The Landmarks Preservation Commission’s designation report for Boerum Hill states that the factory was converted into a church in the 1920s.
As far as I can tell, that church was St. Cyprian’s Protestant Episcopal Church. They did not do much to the exterior of the factory, except build a new, slightly more ecclesiastical entryway to the building. St. Cyprian’s appears to have been founded for a predominantly African American congregation, made up mostly of people from the Caribbean Islands. Most of the information I found on the church is from the 1930s through the early 1950s, and appears in the New York Age, an important black newspaper that published until 1953.
The clergy and parishioners of St. Cyprian’s loved classical music and the arts. There are several mentions of concerts here, with performances by the striving classical artists of the day. These were “colored” men and women, many of them graduates of Juilliard and other prestigious music schools, giving recitals of popular operatic arias and art songs, usually in at least three or four languages. The concerts always ended with their renditions of Negro Spirituals. I can tell you from personal experience, that format still is popular with black classical singers today.
Most of these artists, no matter how good, never made a living singing in the United States. There was just too much racism in this country, and classical artists, especially men, found it next to impossible to be anything but oddities. Some went to live and perform in Europe; most became choir directors, church soloists and music teachers. One of the exceptions, famed African American tenor, Roland Hayes, sang at this church in at least one concert.
St. Cyprian’s Church eventually merged with the predominantly black Calvary Episcopal Church in Bushwick. Today they are still going strong as Calvary-St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church at 966 Bushwick Avenue. A small section of Boerum Hill was landmarked in 1973. At that time, this building was the Sacred Heart Chapel, a Catholic church specifically geared towards the growing Hispanic population in the area. Services were in Spanish, and in 1977, the chapel was redesigned and decorated by Yan H. Reiger, a prominent architect and artist who, along with his wife Françoise, specializes in work in Catholic churches and institutions.
The church was affiliated with St. Agnes Catholic Church in Carroll Gardens. In 1997, they sold the building to the current owners, who turned it into a private home. Today, the building has two units. This site has gone from two single family houses, to a factory, to two churches, full circle back to a home for two families.
(Photograph:Scott Bintner for PropertyShark)
MM: Thank you for this story. I would have never placed this building with Calvary-St. Cyprian’s in Bushwick. This was the church of my best friend’s Bajan (from Barbados) grandparents. They married in the church as well as my best friend in the early 1990s.
Given that Grandpa Welch was a stalwart of the church and served in many capacities, I would not have been surprised if he were a member of the committee that deliberated about the merger of the two church entities. Music remained an important facet of worship.
In the late 90s a trip to Calvary-St. Cyprian’s from by Brownstoner neighborhood perch was different from the kind of adventure one now has traveling to Bushwick. I have not made the journey for several years. My last trip to that church were sorrowful. It was for Grandpa Welch’s funeral.