Saint Teresa’s Roman Catholic Church at 16-18 Rutgers Street at Henry Street in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, is under the authority of the Archdiocese of New York.
There has been a church at the present site since 1798 when Colonel Henry Rutgers deeded out land for development as New York City continued to expand beyond its old boundary at Wall Street. The Rutgers Presbyterian Church was established, and after several years of growth, it built the current structure in 1841 to 1842. It was erected in the Gothic Revival style, and it is said to have oldest public clock in New York City. At that time the neighborhood was well established, and moderately prosperous, with the East River docks just a few blocks south. With its new building, Rutgers Presbyterian Church was there to stay.
In the 1840s the first waves of Irish immigrants began arriving because of the potato famine. They flooded the neighborhood, changing what was a middle class protestant enclave into an Irish Catholic slum. The residents of the Lower East Side began to move, and with it them, the congregation of Rutgers Presbyterian, eventually settling at 73rd and Broadway.
In 1863 the Church of St. Teresa’s was established. The patroness of the parish is Teresa of Avila, the child of Jewish converts, Teresa was born in Spain in 1515. Throughout its history, St Teresa’s has reflected the character of its neighborhood. At first it was a parish of Irish immigrants, who only had to walk the few blocks from the piers on the East River to find help and support from the parish. The neighborhood would soon see wave after wave of immigrants; Germans, and Slavs, in the 20th century, Latinos and most recently, Asians. The mix of cultures and languages gives to St. Teresa’s a multi-cultural flavor, with mass being celebrated every Sunday in English, Chinese and Spanish.
St. Teresa’s had always been a poor parish, worshiping in an old building for which there had never been sufficient funds for proper maintenance. As a result, in 1995 the interior vaulted ceiling of the church collapsed, and 60,000 pounds of plaster fell, breaking through the floor into the basement parish hall. The future looked bleak. There was no money to repair the main church, and many argued that St. Teresa’s should be closed. However, the pastor at the time, Father Dennis Sullivan, and his parishioners were determined that St. Teresa’s would not close.
After the school had been condemned and closed in 1942, it had been torn down and eventually become a parking lot, used by the church and neighborhood residents. By selling the parking lot and adjacent air rights, the parish began extensive renovation of the church, including a new roof, new interior appointments salvaged from what was left from the old, and as the crowning glory of the church the restoration of three murals painted in the 1880s, depicting St. Patrick teaching the pagan kings of Ireland, St. Teresa teaching her sisters, and the crucifixion. The church was reopened in the early winter of 2002.
