18. James Watson House

AKA: Seton Shrine; The Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton
Location: 7 State Street
Built: 1793-1806; additions, 1965
Architect: John McComb, Jr.
Listed: August 24, 1972
Visited: August 5 and September 1, 2007



A stubborn kernel stuck in the teeth of the city. This survivor from the 18th century lives its life shadowed between two skyscrapers: 17 State Street and a modern building so lacking in distinction that I can't remember what it's called. It sits on prime real estate, but even without the landmark designation they'd never dare tear this one down the way its neighbors have been. 17 State Street may have been erected on a site where (among other things) Herman Melville was born, but the Watson house trumps that several times over because it was once the home of Elizabth Ann Seton, the first native-born American canonized by the Vatican. Our first saint! YEAH! Heck, I'm not even being sarcastic! I genuinely think having homegrown saints are awesome, another sign of America's ability to cultivate civilization. Ra-ra-ra this country! Again: not sarcastic.

It is now a church. One of the so-far unspoken aims of this blog is to not just visit but to experience them as best I can. So I'm going to be visiting a lot of houses of worship in the name of this blog; also, a lot of museums, restaurants, maybe even hotels if I can find I've got some money to blow. We will see. In any event, this is where I attend my first Sunday Mass in decades. When I come in, I take the furthest-back pew in order to be ignored -- though with the beard, I'm sort of unavoidable (I really have to shave it down). Ten minutes to mass, it's still pretty empty, an emptiness heightened by the Spartan elegance of the interior: only a series of modern paintings illustrating the Stations of the Cross interrupts the whiteness of the ground floor.

Eventually a crowd of no more than fifty wanders in. This is nothing compared to most suburban churches I know, never mind city behemoths like St. Patrick's. But you gotta figure that even with its growing residential profile, the Battery Park area isn't populated enough to support anything much larger. Its location also probably explains why the crowd skews so young. With Battery Park's relative lack of stores and amenities within walking distance, this is no country for old men (and women). The older churchgoers here seem to be tourists like myself (let's face it, I am a tourist here), though I could be wrong. Crowd strikes me as largely bachelors and bachelorettes, new mothers and fathers. The latter two try their hardest to calm their children down, and, if time permits, teach them something about the religious life, guiding their kids' hands through the Sign of the Cross. I find this touching partly because I've never been able to learn the Sign of the Cross, much to my embarrassment. Even if I'm not a practicing Catholic and can only mumble my way through most of the things other churchgoers can say out loudly and clearly, I should be able to do cross myself, right?

I end up being impressed by how the mass is conducted. I can only wonder the clergy can do this again and again, week after week, without boring others, without boring themselves.

I leave without a picture. I figure taking a picture in such an untouristed place would be impious and disruptive. (I'll likely not feel such restraint in the larger churches.) I also leave without greeting the priests, because...I'm shy.