68. St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church

A.K.A.: Old St. Peter's Church; Church of St. Peter
Location: 22 Barclay Street
Built: 1836-40
Architect: John R. Haggerty and Thomas Thomas
National Register Number: 80002721
Listed: April 23, 1980
Visited: April 13 and May 18, 2008
Additional Documentation: Library of Congress Built in America page



Paint peels off the walls, with pea-soup green giving way to grey. The church is in otherwise fine condition, or at least as fine as a 170-year-old church can be, yet the shabbiness unsettles. I always assume houses of worship to be bedrocks, well-supported by their congregations and the Church they belong to. I don't assume them to be mortal. I mean, I know they are mortal--churches are destroyed and demolished all the time--but mortality seems contrary to their purpose, both religious and social.

What is fragile and delicate inside is granite-stolid outside, and as austere as its Greek counterparts some 5,000 miles and several millenia away. Like St. Paul's Chapel, it was close to terrorist attacks of 2001, and still stands. But I still drop three bucks in one of the donation boxes marked for repairs.