Have you seen St. Brigid's at night?

There are exterior lights on the East Eighth Street side of the church.

Spectacular. The renovations continue here at Avenue B, with an eye toward a possible October opening.

Previously.

And now, a lot of photos of St. Brigid's with steps and sidewalks

On Saturday, a crew continued work on the sidewalk and steps in front of the under-renovation St. Brigid's on Avenue B...

...and as the front looked at the end of the work day...

[Bobby Williams]

[BW]

And last week, crews finished up the sidewalk on the church's Eighth Street side...

...and a bonus aerial view courtesy of Dave on 7th...

...and a night shot...

Last we heard, the church was still on target for a fall opening...

Previously.

Scaffolding and blue paint at St. Brigid's

Workers are putting up scaffolding this morning at St. Brigid's here on Avenue B at Eighth Street... presumably to start work on the small spires for the north tower...

Meanwhile, glad we got a photo of this on the plywood the other day...

[Robert Miner]

Because a worker slapped on another coat of blue paint today...

The baby spires of St. Brigid's

On Tuesday, Dave on 7th pointed out the arrival of the small (baby?) spires atop the south tower of St. Brigid's on Avenue B at East Eighth Street...

Yesterday, courtesy of Bobby Williams, we got a better look at the new tops after workers uncovered them...

Well, not quite the 50-foot, crocketted steeples that, as The Villager noted, "adorned the church until they became unstable and were removed in the 1960s" ...

[St. Brigid's in the 1870s]

...but impressive enough?

Man on a ledge, sort of

Watching some men at work this afternoon atop St. Brigid's on East 8th Street and Avenue B ... inching closer to the edge, though he was fully secured in a safety harness...

Photos by Bobby Williams.

St. Brigid's now has front steps

The renovations continue on Avenue B at East Eighth Street.

Photo by Bobby Williams.

A merger and new stairs for St. Brigid's

[Early last evening]

There's news to report about St. Brigid's, the under-renovation church on Avenue B and East Eighth Street. Good scoop in the current issue of The Villager, where Albert Amateau reports that St. Emeric’s Church, built in 1950 at 740 E. 13th St. at Avenue D, will close and merge with St. Brigid's.

A few passages:

Joseph Zwilling, archdiocese spokesperson, said he hoped for a September opening of St. Brigid and St. Emeric but he was not able to give a definite date.

Father Lorenzo Ato, priest in charge at St. Emeric for the past four years, will be the pastor of the new parish and has already moved into the rectory. Ato, a native of Peru, will also continue to serve as assistant director for Hispanic media for the archdiocese.

Zwilling said there was no decision yet on the disposition of the St. Emeric’s church building or the two-story parochial school built in 1952 next door on E. 12th St. and Avenue D.

[St. Emeric via Google]

Read the full story here.

Meanwhile, yesterday, the work continued at St. Brigid's... where Bobby Williams took shots of the new front steps going in... (being poured?)...

And Dave on 7th noted how the cross looked at sunset...

...and a shot of workers carry a window frame for one of the towers...

Breaking: Workers remove tarp from second tower at St. Brigid's

Earlier this week, workers removed the construction tarp/netting around the church's tower on the north side at East Eighth Street ... this morning here on Avenue B, workers took down the tarp on the south tower...







No way that's fitting into the dryer.

Previously on EV Grieve:
A reader offers details about the restoration of St. Brigid's

The tower of Brigid

Just a quickie follow-up from yesterday's post ... now, workers have removed all the scaffolding from the tower on the East Eighth Street side of St. Brigid's at Avenue B...





...and the view of it from Tompkins Square Park...

Here's one of the towers at St. Brigid's

Workers removed more of the tarp/netting on St. Brigid's yesterday... showing the work under way on the tower on the East Eighth Street side of the church...



Photos by Bobby Williams.

Previously on EV Grieve:
A reader offers details about the restoration of St. Brigid's

The front door at St. Brigid's

Yesterday, from behind the plywood along Avenue B.

A reader offers details about the restoration of St. Brigid's

[Yesterday]

A reader left this comment on our post Wednesday afternoon about St. Brigid's on Avenue B at East Eighth Street....

I’ll try and clear up a few misconceptions as I live near the Church and have been following the process since it began nearly 10 years ago.

1. The Church was never declared a NYC landmark. The NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission ruled against the request for status by a group of individuals because: a) The Church had been modified too much over the years to determine what exactly was part of the requested status. b) It was in a horrible state of disrepair at the time and its very survival made it a huge risk. c) The Landmarks Commission rarely designates Churches because they change so often and the various entities that own the churches don't want to be designated because it makes it difficult for them to make significant changes. They have a very strong lobby in NYC.

2. The central portion of the facade scaffolding was removed [Wednesday] because the contractor needs to start work on the front stairs. He is hoping his portion of the project (all the major interior and exterior construction) will be completed this summer. Significant work to do still on the two towers, roof, exterior fencing, the back, and the interior.

Once their work is done the "liturgical package" work begins: including all interior furnishings —pews, alter, and hopefully the original Keely carved organ. Keely was the original architect and when the Archdiocese tried to demolish the Church '04-'06, the City courts mandated the Archdiocese carefully remove and preserve all interior artifacts. Now no one seems to know where the organ and many other artifacts have gone. a tremendous pity and in contravention of Court orders. The organ was a beautiful piece of work.

Once the liturgical package is complete, the church has to go through a number of city inspections and approvals. My guess is that St. Brigid's might open up for "business" sometime in the early-mid fall. The new parish priest has already moved into the adjacent rectory.

3. The "anonymous" donor is still a mystery. No one has stepped forward to admit making the original $20 million donation, which most likely grew by an additional $10 million after work began and the architects realized they would have to completely redo the outside & foundation. Of the original $20 million, $10 million was dedicated to the restoration, $8 million was given to St. Brigid's school next door and $2 million was put in a church maintenance fund.

Some have speculated that it was Chuck Feeny, multimillionaire Irish-American philanthropist, who made his fortune with duty-free shops and started the Atlantic Philanthropies Foundation. Both he and the foundation have steadfastly denied this. Easy to see why. Others suggest that the Archdiocese itself anonymously "found" the money in order to stave off a confrontation with the New York State Supreme Court where a final case was pending back in 2006. If the Church lost that case it would have had tremendous implications for the ownership of Church property throughout the entire country.

4. There are many good things the current restoration architects, Acheson and Doyle, have done with their budget to bring the church back to the original vision and design of Keely, and execution by the Famine-Irish boat wrights from the local EV community who helped build it back in 1848. They have restored the original brownstone facade, re-made the original windows, made beautiful replacement stain-glass windows (after the Archdiocese willfully destroyed the original hand painted windows in the summer of 2006, in an effort to show its strength and disdain for the community and hasten the demolition process).

The courts issued an injunction stopping the demolition pending the outcome of the case back then. They have painstakingly restored the interior and replaced the old rotting roof with a batten seam, all-copper roof. But they have failed to add back the original 50-foot high steeples on each tower, which could easily be done. And they will not restore the cast-iron fencing around the church — the exact same fencing used and still surrounding Grace Church on Broadway and 10th st.

This will be replaced with an aluminum fence the contractor assures is quite elegant. They did a slap-dash job on the facade of the rectory, quite beautiful originally. But they have done wonderful work supporting the rear wall of the building, the cause of all the structural trouble. It began peeling away from the rest of the church about 30 years ago after an adjacent building was demolished. They have restored and refaced with copper the Crucifix atop the church, and they will replace the original pentacles that were on each corner of the towers. However, they don't seem to be adding back the carved details along the top front ridge of the peeked roof and no one knows if they are planning to return the huge bronze bell removed for "repair" over a year ago.

Hope this helps clarify things a bit.

Rebirth at St. Brigid's

Seeing the photos of the freshly unveiled St. Brigid's exterior yesterday reminded me of a photo that I took a few weeks ago.... when I was walking around the church property on East Eighth Street at Avenue B...

Rebirth is a new salon that recently opened in a storefront behind the church. Seemed sort of fitting.

Here is St. Brigid's!

It has been two-plus years since we're seen the front of the under-renovation St. Brigid's on Avenue B at East Eighth Street...

This afternoon, workers began removing the construction tarp and scaffolding. Bobby Williams is on the scene.

Behold the new St. Brigid's...

Another sign of the cross at St. Brigid's

The cross is back atop the under-renovation St. Brigid's on Avenue B at Eighth Street... and it looks more permanent since the last time that it made an appearance...

Dunno about you, but we're really looking forward to that construction tarp coming down from the front of the church.

And a photo of the church from 1928 via the NYPL Digital Gallery ...

Behold the inside of St. Brigid's

We continue to watch the renovations at St. Brigid's on Avenue B at East Eighth Street... while we have a good idea of how the exterior of the historic church that was left for dead is shaping up, we haven't seen the inside in some time...

Yesterday, Bobby Williams had a chance to take a look...

Previously.