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Virtually New Orleans - Feature Photo of the Week, April 29, 1996
The Original St. Mary's Assumption Church
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St. Mary's Assumption was organized in 1842 to minister to the people of the neighborhoods now known as the Irish Channel and the Garden District. The New Orleans area was growing, and the recently-incorporated city of Lafayette had been formed out of subdivided land from the Nuns and Livaudais plantations. Immigrant families, mostly Irish and German, had moved to the area to work on the construction of the New Basin Canal. Bishop Antoine Blanc (the namesake of Pere Antoine Alley next to St. Louis Cathedral) invited the Redemptorist Order to move to Lafayette and start a parish. So, Father Peter Czackert, C.SS.R., started the parish, and Father Joseph Kundeck, C.SS.R., supervised the construction of this church, which became the first St. Mary's Assumption Church.
It quickly became evident that the Irish and German communities of the area were not getting along well, so the Irish began construction on St. Alphonsus Church on Constance St. Not to be outdone, the German community then began planning a grand brick structure to replace this small wooden frame chapel. When they began construction of the current St. Mary's Church, the community had this frame building moved out to St. Joseph Cemetery on Washington Avenue as the cemetery's mortuary chapel.
I chose this shot for a feature photo because the structure has been in the news lately. That in itself is interesting, because I wasn't even aware of its existence until only a few months ago, when doing research on Metairie Cemetery. I read in a book on cemeteries about how the original St. Mary's had been moved to St. Joseph's Cemetery. One of the reasons I never realized this chapel existed is because the neighborhood around St. Joseph Number One and Two (Washington and LaSalle) has gone down pretty bad. This is the outskirts of the Magnolia housing project, which is not the safest part of town. (To that end, I do not recommend at all that you visit this location. Be content with the photos.)
Anyway, back to the news item. One of the other Redemptorist properties in the Uptown area is the Our Mother of Perpetual Help chapel on Prytania and Third. The Redemptorist Fathers have agreed to sell the chapel building to author and Garden District resident Anne Rice, much to the dismay and consternation of those who regularly attend Mass there. Mrs. Rice believes that these folks would do better going St. Mary's for Mass, thereby contributing to the overall life of the parish. The Garden District folk aren't too keen about going to the big church for Mass. The newspaper reported that they (the chapel parishoners) have approached Mrs. Rice about helping them move the Old St. Mary's chapel out of the cemetery and onto a vacant lot in the Garden District. They want Mrs. Rice to delay closure of the OMPH chapel until they could accomplish this move. There are lots of complications to any move of the sort proposed. First, the building is the property of the archdiocese, since they own St. Joseph Cemetery. Second, there is likely to be lots of opposition to moving the building from the cemetery, since it's spent over 140 years as a burial chapel. It's part of the Central City neighborhood now.
This photo was shot by me (Ed Branley), with my trusty Nikon FA and a 50mm lens.
If you have any comments on the feature photos, please feel free to drop me a line and tell 'em to me!
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