Parish History



In 1899, land for the Chapel of Notre Dame was purchased by Mrs. Geraldyn (Estelle Livingston) Redmond and deeded to the Fathers of Mercy, a community of French priests, in 1909. Mrs. Redmond also financed a large portion of the construction of the church. The chapel was dedicated on October 2, 1910 by Archbishop John Farley, and began as a mission chapel of St. Vincent de Paul on West 23rd Street.

From the beginning, the Fathers of Mercy intended to build a novitiate on the site, which included a larger church and a rectory. Maurice Reynaud, S.P.M., the first administrator of Notre Dame, affiliated the church with the Shrine of the Blessed Mother in Lourdes in 1913, enabling worshippers at the Church of Notre Dame in New York to obtain the same spiritual benefits as pilgrims who travel to Lourdes, France. A special arrangement that continues to the present was made for Lourdes water to be shipped from the shrine in France to Notre Dame in New York. Fr. Reynaud was officially appointed the first pastor of Notre Dame in 1913.

On February 11, 1915, Cardinal Farley returned to dedicate the large church building.

Notre Dame became a parish independent of St. Vincent de Paul in 1919. Although the church was built for the French people of New York, Masses and special devotional services were offered in both French and English, a practice that continued through the early 1960s.

French and English speaking parishioners, visitors and pilgrims from around the nation and beyond made up the demographic of Notre Dame’s parish from the very beginning, even though Notre Dame was most strongly connected with France. During WW I, Oeuvre du Tricot Notre Dame, a relief effort consisting of women volunteers who manufactured clothes for French soldiers, operated one hundred sewing machines in the church basement.

In 1936, the Notre Dame Study Club, an organization of parishioners, was the first group in a Catholic parish to urge all Catholics to support social justice for black Americans. The same organization lobbied the U.S. Senate to support anti-lynching legislation in 1937. Although no extant records or minutes of this organization have been discovered, the annual parish report to the Archdiocese shows that the number of Study Club members fluctuated between 48 and 160 during the years 1945 and 1953, after which time it ceased to exist.

In the early years, Notre Dame enjoyed a thriving parish; however, its financial situation might have fared better in the long run under more fiscally responsible stewards. In 1945, an investigation by the Committee of Parish Incorporations revealed that the church had never been incorporated, and questionable financial practices had been consistently carried out since the establishment of the church. In 1960, after a period of struggling to meet parish expenses and maintain the building, the Fathers of Mercy relinquished custodianship of Notre Dame to the Archdiocese of New York.

Irish Americans who moved into Morningside Heights comprised the majority of parish membership from the 1940s through the 1970s, and elaborate St. Patrick’s Day entertainments, complete with bagpipers and step-dancers, were presented in the basement auditorium by the parishioners of Notre Dame each March. In time, parishioners of diverse ethnicities began to arrive in the neighborhood, and at present, Mass is offered in English, French and Spanish each Sunday, with combined trilingual Masses taking place on special occasions such as Christmas and Easter.

In 2003, the Polish Province of the Dominican order was entrusted with responsibility for Notre Dame and all of its ministries. The Archdiocese of New York resumed custodianship in 2011.

The year 2012 brought two major changes. The chaplaincy of the Columbia Catholic Ministry of Columbia University and Barnard College, which had been established at Notre Dame in 1988, was transferred to Corpus Christi Church on West 121st Street. The second change came when, with the closing of the Church of St. Vincent de Paul in 2012, its Francophone and French parishioners joined the parish of Notre Dame.

The Francophone community provides bilingual religious education classes and operates a number of vital outreach missions, including a food pantry and winter coat distribution program. The parish of Notre Dame has a

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