Catholics in New York 1808-1946 explores the social and political history of the diverse group of people who established the formidable Catholic presence in New York.
The exhibition is organized around three central themes:
- How Catholic community life revolved around New York's parishes, starting with the earliest, such as St. Peter's, old St. Patrick's, and St. Brigid's in Manhattan, and the distinctive subculture that arose in their heavily Catholic neighborhoods;
- The creation of a vast system of health, education, and social welfare institutions, including parochial schools, the New York Foundling Hospital, and healthcare centers such as St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan and St. Mary’s Hospital in Brooklyn, originally founded by Catholics to provide services that embraced their religion and that would be insulated from anti-Catholic prejudice; and
- The rise of Catholics as a force in New York politics, framed by such New York figures as William R. Grace (1832-1904), the Irish-born businessman who in 1880 was elected the first Catholic mayor of New York City; Alfred E. Smith (1873-1944), the governor from the Lower East Side who became the first Catholic to be nominated by a major political party for President of the United States, in 1928; Vito Marcantonio (1902-1954), the Congressman and American Labor Party leader from East Harlem; and many others.
Woven throughout all three sections is how this "community of immigrants" defended its Catholic identity in response to widespread anti-Catholicism. The exhibition begins with a prologue that looks at anti-Catholicism in the colonial period; it concludes with the implementation of the G.I. Bill, which paved the way to higher education, low-cost home mortgages, and ultimately the migration to the suburbs for many of New York’s Catholics, and with an epilogue that presents the new face of Catholic New York since World War II.
Highlights of the exhibition include:
- over 100 family photographs showing the diverse people of pre-war Catholic New York, collected through a massive outreach to New Yorkers conducted by Museum of the City of New York curatorial staff; also included will be parochial school report cards and yearbooks from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, sports uniforms and trophies, parish publications, and audio interviews with New Yorkers recalling their experiences growing up Catholic;
- documents related to the life of Pierre Toussaint (1766-1853), a former slave who supported church organization and whose charitable works have earned him consideration for sainthood;
- an original Test Book from the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, listing the name of Archbishop John Hughes (1797-1864) as one of the first depositors in 1850;
- a handwritten note from a Catholic mother who left her child with the New York Foundling Hospital in 1877.
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