Father Pitt

St. Henry Church has been abandoned for years, and it is slowly rotting away. Yet the neighborhood still remembers it as a point of pride: when Father Pitt was taking pictures along Arlington Avenue the other day, some locals stopped to talk and immediately asked, “Did you see our church?”

And, of course, our utility cables.

St. Henry was designed by Marlier & Johnstone and built in 1952, when the neighborhood was thriving.

Each of those squares had a symbolic relief at its center, with a big metal cross in the middle of the façade. Those have all been taken away, because when Catholics abandon a building, they generally preserve whatever is unique and valuable about it and place it in another parish if possible. It does leave the building looking stripped, but we can understand the impulse.

The entrance is sharply drawn in a style that flavors modern with just a bit of late Art Deco.

An abstract cross-topped cupola.

An exhibition of utility cables.

The rectory is older than the church; it is hard to guess the age of it, and it has been added to in various eras and various styles.

The school next to the church has been abandoned twice. It was a public primary school for a while after the parochial school closed, but the public school closed a few years ago.