Hi. . .
A developer is pressuring Asbury Park, New Jersey City Council to allow him to bring out wrecking ball(s) and raze this 140+ year old Roman Catholic church to the ground - pure rubble. As I remember it, the cornerstone on the right side in the front reads
1879.
Please vote. You can vote for more than 1 option. I'm just curious. If anyone wants more poll options, add them if you can or post and I'll add it/them when I can. THANK YOU!
I always thought there were laws preventing the destruction of historic buildings (based on age and quality). This church is in mint condition. I was an altar boy there for years. But, I'm sure you all guessed that over the last 10-15 years, right? :0
I grew up in the general area and attended school K-8 grades in a huge building behind the church that was converted into condos decades ago.
There are actually 2 churches inside the one pictured below. The outside steps take you to the upper church with ceilings to the roof as pictured, then another larger church below the main church is accessible via inside stairs.
c. 1880 Church in Asbury Park, NJ - $2,750,000
More pictures -- spoiler and link below contain ~40 pictures.
The church is just 6 blocks from the beach to the East/right -
And yes... to the SouthEast of the church across from the beach is the legendary
The Stone Pony nightclub where Bruce Springsteen started off to fame and fortune.
THE DECLINE OF HOLY SPIRIT PARISH AND SCHOOL (Skip to END if bored!) :0
The Church site has been losing a reported $500,000 per month for years/decades (??) now. The last sale price I saw was just over $2.7 million, with the developer intending to demolish the Churches (and other buildings) and build (not necessarily affordable) new housing on the site.
Holy Spirit Church, Rectory (priests living quarters), Convent (nuns LQ), and other buildings occupy a full city block with a few stores to the West on Main Street. The now converted old 4-story school building was one entire city block in length and occupied ~15-25% of the depth. Both the Rectory and Convent had many guest facilities and rooms for clergy and nuns on summer vacation.
The downfall of Holy Spirit Parish can be traced back to at least the mid-late 1960s as school enrollment along with parishioner numbers began declining initially due to new public schools being built in surrounding areas in response to busing. Private Catholic schools were now starting to lose out big.
Student numbers and parishioners continued to decline each year as racial violence (late 1960s) crept quickly into Asbury Park and then neighboring towns following the 1965 Watts (CA) riots. And each time yet another priest sex scandal arose, more kids left Catholic schools with parishioners leaving in hot pursuit. I remember hearing the term "Lapsed Catholic" in or after college for the first time in the 1980s.
The multi-million dollar lawsuits hit parishes hard too. To this day, I don't understand why the Church just didn't call 9-1-1 and let the police investigate. No church is really equipped to do a thorough investigation of this kind. When they did, they just moved the problem priest to a new parish with new victims just waiting for him.
People started leaving the whole area as few people could afford a home with 20% mortgage interest in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Parts of Asbury Park and other towns became very dangerous - even during the daylight hours. Beach tourism was substantially killed off after the two beach/pool clubs closed ("7th Ave B&P Club" and "Monte Carlo") at the city's North end. Beach traffic was nill as inflation in 1979 drove season beach badge prices up so high that many could no longer afford them. (you have to pay $$ to go on the beach in the summer in NJ).
In addition, large portions of Asbury Park and surrounding towns burned to the ground during the 1968/9 race riots. It is a sight you never forget even as a child. Very sad. Then out of seemingly nowhere, LA gangs like Bloods and Crips began showing up in the late 1970s/1980s.
La Cosa Nostra was fuming. New York's Five Families sent crews; the DeCavalcante Crime Family is New Jersey home-grown; then the Scarfo Crime Family (Philadelphia) sent crews as well. New Jersey is usually a wash in mob activity especially due to Atlantic City and bordering NYC, Philadelphia, and Wilmington, DE. We were used to it. Shootings and murders increased all over NJ but Asbury Park and several other towns took the brunt of it from what I read in the papers. I don't know if the LA gang chapters are still around that area or not.
Then came the brilliant idea by city managers to build a sewage treatment plant a few blocks from the beach, stretching to the beach itself with huge pipes going out into the Atlantic Ocean. That pretty much did Asbury Park in. Beaches were literally empty for ages after the sewage treatment plant went online. People just went elsewhere.
In recent years, Asbury Park has made one hell of a comeback, but mostly with "woke" folks, who want homes, condos, townhouses - and are not really interested in a 140+ year Catholic Church relic. Although I thought buildings like these get placed on some historic register somewhere and cannot be touched...?
There is another Catholic Parish and church in Western Asbury Park, Mount Carmel, which is where the Vatican/Diocese of Trenton now wants to concentrate on bringing all area Roman Catholics together under one roof. Good luck with that.
Anyway, some of the above info came from newspapers; part is opinion.
~40 pictures of the 2 Holy Spirit churches inside and out - c. 1880 Church in Asbury Park, NJ - $2,750,000
Just scroll down the page. The pics are breathtaking. I can't believe that the all-stone church with towering ceilings, marble floors can't be moved somehow to the West to much cheaper non-beachfront land and either reassembled or the materials somehow repurposed in other construction projects. Better than a wrecking ball, but obviously not a cheaper alternative.
For now, City Council voted 4-2 to scrap the idea of razing the Church and surrounding structures to the ground. The future is uncertain at best.
John
