Sr. Regina Bechtle, SC has a letter to the Editor of America Magazine pointing out the ” Pre-park settlers also included the Sisters of Charity”. This letter is in the Nov. 1, 2004 issue, the one that contains the recent article by Fr. Maloney, CM on angels.
“In his reflection on Central Park (Of Many Things, 10/11) George M. Anderson, S.J., writes of the “shanty town dwellers and black settlers” who lived there before the park’s creation by wealthy New Yorkers who sought a woodland haven. Pre-park settlers also included the Sisters of Charity, who separated from their Emmitsburg, Md., roots in 1846 and formed an independent diocesan congregation to serve the needs of New York City’s mostly poor immigrant Catholics.
In 1847 the new community bought six acres of property at McGown’s Pass, near Fifth Avenue and what is now 107th Street. They transformed a dilapidated frame house (the former Black Horse Tavern) into Mount St. Vincent, with a motherhouse, novitiate and girls’ academy to help support their work for the poor. A plaque marks the site today.
The crown jewel was a chapel, the first in the archdiocese to be dedicated in honor of the Immaculate Conception. Shortly before the chapel was blessed on March 19, 1855, the City of New York informed the community that the plans of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux for a new “Central Park” included the property of the Sisters of Charity. After less than 10 years in the place they had labored mightily to make their home, the sisters had to pick up, move on and begin again.
They refounded Mount St. Vincent about 10 miles north in Riverdale, a scenic but sparsely settled section bordering the Hudson River just south of Yonkers. Today, on the same site, the Sisters of Charity Center and the College of Mount St.Vincent (successor of the academy) continue the mission of charity begun before Central Park came to be.
