NEW YORK CITY

Once an “Ampler Field” for Jesuit Education Than Georgetown?

By John LaMartina, SJ

     The next time you happen to visit New York City and find yourself gazing at the Gothic beauty of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, you may want to try and picture it when a Jesuit school was on the site. That’s right — for a brief time in the early 1800’s, the Fifth Avenue location where St. Patrick’s Cathedral stands was the site of a Jesuit school that some hoped would replace Georgetown.

     It all started in 1805 when, after being suppressed for several decades, the Jesuit order began to be restored. At this time, New York was part of the diocese of Baltimore, the only diocese in the United States. John Carroll, a former Jesuit, had been appointed bishop in 1789, but the administration of this vast diocese was proving to be too difficult for one bishop. Accordingly, Pope Pius VII in 1808 turned Baltimore into an archdiocese and made four new dioceses, of which New York was one. The same year, Fr. Luke Concanen, OP, was named the first bishop of New York, which at the time comprised the state of New York and eastern New Jersey. Pending the arrival of Bishop Concanen, who was then in Europe, Archbishop Carroll sent Fr. Anthony Kohlmann, SJ, from what was known as the American Mission, to be vicar general and administrator of the new diocese. Kohlmann had entered the Society of Jesus as a priest in White Russia and had come to Georgetown College in 1806, where he taught philosophy and assisted the master of novices. In 1808, he arrived in New York with five other Jesuits; Father Benedict Fenwick, SJ, the future second bishop of Boston; and four scholastics, with a view to making a second attempt to found a college in New York City. The first college, a “Latin School” opened by Jesuit priests Thomas Harvey, Henry Harrison and Charles Gage at Bowling Green in 1684, closed with the enforcement of the penal laws and the expulsion of Jesuits in 1689. Harvey and Harrison eventually made their way to Maryland.
     The new school, The New York Literary Institution, began with 17 students in December 1808, in a rented house on Mulberry Street in lower Manhattan, fronting the ground on which Kohlmann was building the first St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Mott Street. Soon outgrowing its quarters, the school was moved to Broadway the following July. Concerning the move, Kohlmann wrote to Archbishop Carroll, “It [the school] now consists of about thirty-five of the most respectable children of the city, Catholic as well as Protestant. Four are boarding at our house and in all probability we shall have seven or eight boarders next August.”
     In 1810, to accommodate the growing enrollment, a third site was bought on Fifth Avenue between 50th and 51st streets, where the second Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, completed in 1879, now stands. Here, the New York Literary Institution, located about four miles out of the city and under the immediate supervision of Fenwick, became solely a boarding school, where as at Mulberry Street and at Broadway it had been primarily a day school. Because of the distance, Kohlmann only traveled to the school “in the country” from his house on Mulberry Street every Saturday and stayed overnight.
     The New York Literary Institution continued to flourish and by 1813 could boast of having 74 boarders. This very growth, however, would be the reason for its closing that same year because Kohlmann was unable to obtain a sufficient number of Jesuits, whom he believed should be the sole teachers in the college. In 1813, there were only 40 Jesuits in the American Mission. Jesuit superiors felt there were not enough men to supply both the New York Literary Institution and Georgetown College in Washington, D.C., with an all-Jesuit faculty. Archbishop Carroll favored the continuance of the school in New York if teachers other than Jesuits could be supplied. Kohlmann, however, wanted only Jesuit teachers at the college. Pointing out that the Catholic population in New York was greater than any other city, Kohlmann argued that New York was an “ampler field” for Jesuit labors. He believed preference should be given to the New York school and urged that Georgetown College be transferred to New York and its site in Washington be converted into a novitiate. Both Archbishop Carroll, who founded Georgetown in 1789, and Fr. John Grassi, SJ, mission superior and president of Georgetown, who was in the process of reviving and expanding the college, were impressed by Kohlmann’s arguments. They saw great promise in maintaining the New York Literary Institution, but not at the expense of Georgetown College, which they believed would continue to grow and prosper and become the center of Catholic education in the capital of the United States.
     In September 1813, the New York Literary Institution was closed. The building was loaned to Fr. Augustin de l’Estrange, superior of a group of Trappist exiles from France. One of Father Kohlmann’s plans as vicar general was to open an orphan asylum in New York City. The Trappists used Kohlmann’s former school as a shelter for 33 children, most of them orphans under the supervision of Trappistine nuns. The project, however, had to be abandoned, and the building closed in 1815 when the Trappists returned to France. The Society was left with a debt of $10,000, which was finally paid off with great difficulty. The property was eventually sold for $1,800 with a mortgage.
     After passing through several hands, it finally came into the possession of the trustees of St. Patrick’s and St. Peter’s churches. In 1815, Kohlmann, with the arrival of Fr. John Connolly, OP, the second bishop of New York (Bishop Concanen died in Europe without ever reaching New York) returned to Georgetown.
     Jesuits would not return to New York until 1846, when at the request of Bishop John Hughes, Jesuits from the Province of France left St. Mary’s College in Kentucky to take charge of St. John’s College and Seminary at Fordham, under the rectorship of Fr. Augustus Thebaud, SJ. Here, Fr. Clement Boulanger, SJ, established his headquarters as the superior of the New York and Canada Mission.