The Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
The address I was given for this project was “across the street from the Plymouth Church” and Whitman was quoted as having said “I once heard Beecher under curious circumstances: from across the street white Plymouth church was undergoing repairs of some kind: hit me so hard, fascinated me to such a degree, that I was afterwards willing to go far out of my way to hear him talk.” The Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary sits upon the lot of land directly opposite of the Plymouth Church-Whitman’s estimated address in 1825. The church itself wasn’t built until 1842 but before that, maps of Brooklyn Heights show that the lot was split up into three houses. This has lead me to believe that the house Whitman lived in in 1824 was demolished between 1887 (The last map I could find that didn’t have the church) and August of 1908 when the church broke ground on newly acquired property on Cranberry and Middaugh Streets.
- A Map of the houses on Cranberry Street around 1870
A Land Map from 1920
Though the Church was built in 1842, it was moved to Cranberry Street after the old building was taken over by “eminent domain” in order to build the Manhattan Bridge in 1903. The parish got $125,000 and bought four lots of land, two on Cranberry Street and two on Middaugh.
The Church of the Assumption was responsible for keeping open Public School 8 (located on Hicks between Poplar and Middaugh) after the construction location of the Manhattan Bridge made operating the school impractical. They gave the city six and a half lots of land near the school in exchange for the property and after renovation, reopened it as the ‘Assumption School’ in 1909.
There were no other major events after this though the Church’s Website provides a detailed description of the different Pastors and Church officials throughout history as well as information on various committee’s and programs started within the church.
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