St. Patrick’s Church

624 Grand Avenue (demolished)

St. Patrick’s Church interior. Photo courtesy George Scali.

By 1850, the influx of new Irish immigrants to New Haven amid the “Great Hunger” back in Ireland led to the designation of a second Catholic parish in the city. (The first had been Christ Church, built in 1834 where Yale New Haven Hospital is currently located. It was destroyed by fire in 1848, renamed St. Mary’s and reopened in 1848 on Church Street until 1874 when it relocated to its current location on Hillhouse Avenue.) In 1851 the cornerstone for St. Patrick’s Church was laid on the southwest corner of Grand and Wallace, soon to be followed by a parish school on Hamilton Street, staffed by the Sisters of Mercy. The original church, destroyed by fire in 1875, was rebuilt at the same site in 1876.

In 1868, in a highly unusual arrangement between the New Haven Board of Education and the Church, the parish school became a public school and was renamed Hamilton Street School. The Sisters of Mercy continued to comprise the majority of the teaching staff. For more than 100 years, St. Patrick’s Church and Hamilton Street School were at the core of neighborhood life, serving generations of immigrants and their children. The school was closed in 1959 after a fire and the church was demolished in 1966 during the period of urban renewal and construction of Interstate 91.

Text sources: O’Donnell, Rev. James H. History of the Diocese of Hartford; Proto, Alphonse, It Was Grand! New Haven’s St. Patrick’s Church, Hamilton Street School and Memories of a Unique Neighborhood 1940-1966, Foz LLC, 2019; The Shanachie Vol. XXV, No. 1, 2013, Link.