The lot that used to hold the pre-Civil War Gothic Revival St. Lucy-St. Patrick Roman Catholic Church on Bed-Stuy’s Willoughby Avenue is slated to be developed with at least two townhouses, city records show.
One four-story two-family house is already rising at 291 Willoughby Avenue between Kent Avenue and Taaffe Place. It’s one of six addresses that make up a large corner site whose bulk the church occupied from 1856 until 2024.
The building going up at 291 Willoughby Avenue is close to the corner of Taaffe Place, with one vacant lot sitting between it and the former rectory building at 285 Willoughby Avenue at the corner of Taaffe.
The four-story mansard-roofed Second Empire/Italianate rectory, which was spared from demolition when the historic church was razed in January last year, already exceeds its allowable FAR (floor area ratio) and seems set to stay.
A new-building permit application for another four-story two-family house has also been filed for the empty lot between the rectory and 291 Willoughby Avenue, whose address is 289 Willoughby Avenue. That has yet to be approved by the Department of Buildings. So far, no other new-building permits have been applied for the block, and it’s unclear whether the rest of it will be developed with more townhouses or a large apartment building.
Architect Nicholai Katz, who is listed as the architect of record on the building permits for 291 Willoughby Avenue but not for 289 Willoughby Avenue, told Brownstoner he is working on the townhouse, but doesn’t know what the developer has in mind for the remainder of the site.
Wolfe Landau of Williamsburg-based Watermark Capital Group entered a contract with the Roman Catholic Church of St. Patrick to buy the church building and adjacent rectory at 920 Kent Avenue and 285 Willoughby Avenue for $12.25 million in July 2023.
City records show prior to the sale, the Roman Catholic Church entered an agreement with St. Lucy-St. Patrick Housing Development Fund Corporation, which owns the large housing complex at 918 Kent Avenue, to create one tax lot from the three sites at 918 and 920 Kent Avenue and 285 Willoughby Avenue. The agreement gives both parties increased development rights, documents show.
Watermark Capital Group demolished the red-brick Gothic Revival St. Lucy-St. Patrick Roman Catholic Church building at 920 Kent Avenue and a petite attached three-story mansard-roofed Second Empire/Italianate structure in January 2024.
The size of the lot at 920 Kent Avenue (now split into multiple Willoughby Avenue addresses) and the R6B residential zoning means a building almost three times bigger than the church could have gone up on the site, but so far it seems like Watermark Capital Group could be planning a row of townhouses. The developer did not respond to requests for comment, and no renderings were available.
Watermark Capital Group’s projects in Brooklyn include a 19-story apartment tower that replaced a one-story church at 321 Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg and the adaptive reuse of an historic school at 125 Eagle Street in Greenpoint, a Romanesque Revival building that lost its distinctive gable and front entrance after 2012, old photos show.
The church, which was initially just St. Patrick’s, was completed in 1856 and designed by architect James J. Lyons, according to newspaper accounts of the time. Around 1873, noted ecclesiastical architect Patrick Keeley made extensive improvements to the building. The rectory went up around 1875, according to the Real Estate Record. In the 20th century, the church combined with St. Lucy’s to become St. Lucy-St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church.
The house of worship sits amid what was once a three-block span down Willoughby Avenue of stately 1850s and 1860s red brick and brownstone buildings owned by religious institutions. The swath included St. Mary’s Episcopal Church between Emerson Place and Classon Avenue and the Sisters of Mercy Convent between Classon Avenue and Taaffe Place in addition to St. Lucy-St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church. The site is just outside the Clinton Hill Historic District.
Churches have been selling off property all over the borough, thanks to declining attendance, deteriorating structures, and skyrocketing property values. Many have been demolished for new housing, but in some cases buildings are altered or extended, and occasionally preserved and adapted for new uses.
This story first appeared on Brooklyn Paper’s sister site Brownstoner
