Our Lady of the Rosary Church
Updated December 3, 2021 | By Matthew Christopher
When neighbors first saw the demolition notice on the Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Church on 63rd and Callowhill in late spring of 2021, their initial reaction was shock: tearing down the church hadn’t been in the plans for the building that were discussed with them. The Philadelphia Historical Commission had denied awarding the church an historic designation in 2019 - despite the fact that it met the necessary criteria – with the understanding that a designation would make renovating the church into a gymnasium too costly for its owner, Boys Latin of Philadelphia Charter School. As far as anyone knew, turning the church into a gym was still the plan. Emails from community and civic groups to Boys Latin were ignored until a petition to block demolition was started and there was a protest in front of the building that gained the attention of local news. The demolition notice was taken down but construction fencing surrounding the property went up.
Christopher Daniels, the middle school teacher who had started the petition and whose family had been members of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament’s congregation for over 40 years, knew that there wasn’t much time to act if there was any hope of preventing the church from being destroyed. Boys Latin was still infamous for razing the gorgeous Church of the Transfiguration on 56th and Cedar in 2009 and leaving an empty lot in its place. Working alongside the neighborhood civic group HMC Squared, Daniels helped pass out flyers and set up Zoom meetings to come up with a game plan. Celeste Anne Morollo, the author and historian who had nominated the church for a historic designation, was contacted, and the aid of Hal Shirmer, an attorney who had filed appeals in numerous similar circumstances to preserve historic buildings, was enlisted. The protest outside the Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament was held on July 5. The CEO of Boys Latin arrived at the protest and invited Daniels and HMC Squared to meet the next day at their school on the former Transfiguration property. While they were at the meeting, demolition on the church began.
View of Our Lady of the Rosary Church from 1931
Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament was originally founded as Our Lady of the Rosary Roman Catholic Church, an outgrowth of the neighboring Our Mother of Sorrows. The cornerstone was laid in October of 1888 with great fanfare: over 1,000 people attended the ceremony, with multiple church bands and temperance societies among their numbers. Inside the cornerstone were names of officiating clergymen, the names of the president (Grover Cleveland) and the Pennsylvania governor (James Addams Beaver), gold and silver coins minted that year, medals, and copies of The Times and other newspapers from that day. The day the article was carried in the news was October 17, the same day Thomas Edison filed for a patent of the Optical Phonograph, the precursor to the first movie camera.
Two years later, on October 5, 1890, the finished church was dedicated. The tickets-only event was packed to the front doors, and during the procession Ave Maria was played by an orchestra that was accompanied by a solo violinist, a harp, and the church’s brand new Mudler pipe organ. After the ceremonies, a procession of 4,000 children from the Sunday schools of Our Mother of Sorrows and Our Lady of the Rosary marched down the street. The opening was likely timed to coincide with the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary on October 7, a celebration marking the anniversary of the Holy League of 1571’s sweeping naval victory over the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Lepanto. Articles about the dedication ceremony proclaimed that Our Lady of the Rosary was the “prettiest little church in Philadelphia.”
Our Lady of the Rosary Roman Catholic Church in Philadelphia, shortly before demolition.
It was indeed a beautiful church, designed in the Romanesque Revival style by architect Frank Rushmore Watson, who also planned St. Stephen's Roman Catholic Church at Broad and Butler Streets and New Tabernacle Baptist Church at Chestnut Street west of 40th Street. Built to seat 1,000 parishioners, Our Lady of the Rosary was constructed with locally quarried Haddington stone with granite trimmings, and its interior was fashioned with antique oak. Fifteen stained glass windows depicted different mysteries of the rosary, and the belfry spire was 122 feet high.
Other than the addition of a parochial school in 1901, articles about the church and its congregation were unremarkable marriage and funeral notices. A breathless 1921 newspaper item recounted the story of a priest collapsing while giving a sermon, but he recovered and was fine. In some ways this is more telling about what newspapers covered in that time period than it is about the church’s history. Like many churches, Our Lady of the Rosary served mainly one ethnic group (in this case, Irish-American), but welcomed others in the community decades before other area churches followed suit. The population of the neighborhood shifted, and by 1996 - a year after Our Lady of the Rosary merged with the former Our Lady of Victory Parish and was renamed Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament - 90% of the 600 attending members were African and Caribbean American.
Lucien Crump's painting of the crucifixion at Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Church
One of the more significant events in the history of the church occurred after the painting over the altar entitled the Assumption of the Virgin was destroyed when it fell from the wall as a result of the winter freeze-thaw cycle. In 1996, retired art teacher and gallery owner Lucien Crump was brought in to paint a replacement, and opted to create a 14 by 28 foot portrayal of the Crucifixion flanked by St. John the Apostle and the Virgin Mary. As a reflection of the ethnic makeup of the congregation, Crump’s figures were Black, a decision lauded both for its representation of the inclusivity of the church and, in all likelihood, its historical accuracy. Crump, who worked tirelessly to complete the piece and passed away a decade later, clearly felt the painting was to be his life’s work, and the newspaper article on the painting closed by observing that the church had an artwork worthy of hanging on its wall for the next century.
Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament would not exist for another century, however; it was merged again with St. Cyprian Parish in 2013, who used it for occasional liturgies. St. Cyprian was responsible for maintenance, including $3,500 in repairs that were needed to fix damage from a broken water pipe. St. Cyprian was also struggling, with only 440 members attending Sunday mass. Without parish funding they would have to cut staff and outreach programs to maintain Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament. St. Cyprian petitioned to close the church rather than pay for its upkeep, and in 2014 the building was left vacant. A year later the property was sold to Boys Latin Charter School, despite the fact that they were mostly known for razing the Church of the Transfiguration for a proposed expansion to their school and then doing nothing with the lot for over a decade.
When Celeste Morollo nominated Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament for a historic designation that would potentially protect the property in 2019, the meetings at the Philadelphia Historical Commission were testy. Boys Latin opposed the designation because they claimed it would more than double the costs of repurposing the building for a gym. During the meetings Boys Latin’s CEO said preserving the building “is really protecting, I believe, white history, white culture ... at the expense of 375 students who will not otherwise have a gymnasium” and brought in students and their family members to decry denying students an athletic space. A Boys Latin board member added, “Do you know what Philadelphia was like in 1887? Do you know what it was like for black people? Do you understand the implications of what black people were living with?”
The fact that Boys Latin’s school was located in the former Transfiguration school building that had an empty lot next to it where the church had stood that would be perfectly suitable did not appear to have impacted the decision, nor did the fact that Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament was over two miles from the the Transfiguration property and thus would not be conveniently accessible without bussing students to it.
The final days of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Church
This rhetoric framing the decision for designation as placing the needs of the Black community against preserving European history ignored the fact that the church’s congregation had for decades been primarily Black, and also that Boys Latin was not seeking feedback from the Black members of the community around the church itself, only from their own students and staff who had been led to believe that there was no other option if they wanted a gym. It was also dishonest: in their private meeting minutes, Boys Latin had already been preparing to demolish the building for months, but had this been shared with the Historical Commission, it would have influenced their decision, so it was not mentioned. So, despite the fact that Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament met the required criteria, its nomination was denied.
By the time the demolition notice was posted on the door of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament on Memorial Day weekend of 2021, there was little anyone could do. Before the demolition of the exterior began in July, the interior was already being stripped. As in many cases with endangered buildings, I believe the motive is that you can’t preserve something that no longer exists, so moving quickly and doing as much damage as possible before people are able to react is critical.
In the meeting between the protestors and Boys Latin on the day exterior demolition began, Councilman Curtis Jones Jr. expressed remorse for supporting Boys Latin’s efforts to deny historical designation, saying that had he known that they had planned to demolish the building, he would not have written a letter on their behalf to the historical commission. It was too late, though. The appeals to prevent the demolition were denied and without sufficient time for the opposition to the demolition to gain traction, Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament was destroyed. Chris Daniels visited the church in the process, taking pictures as it vanished, bit by bit. In its last days only the belltower remained standing and then that too was gone. According to Daniels, months after the demolition the lot is still just a gaping hole in the ground, serving as a metaphor for its own loss. Another piece of the neighborhood’s few historic and architectural treasures is no more, and empty space is all that is left.
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