History

History of New York District by Br. Luke Salm (PDF)

The First Three Visitors of New York 1870-1899

Brother Patrick continued as the Visitor of New York until 1873 when he was elected Assistant, the first American to hold that office. By the time he finished his term as Visitor, Brother Patrick had opened schools in the parishes of St. Columba, St. Nicholas, St. Teresa, and St. Peter in New York City, as well as schools in Hartford, Providence, Watervliet, and Syracuse. Staffing for the schools was provided by a vigorous program of recruiting candidates for the novitiate from Ireland. In 1971 Brother Patrick moved the novitiate from Second Street to an estate overlooking Long Island Sound in what was then Westchester, now the Bronx. With connections to the Sadlier family of publishers, as early as 1850 Brother Patrick had overseen the publication of Institute texts and some of the writings of De La Salle, including several editions of his catechism. As Visitor and Assistant he continued publishing through the facilities of the print shop at the Catholic Protectory, now permanently established also in Westchester. In 1861 the La Salle Bureau was set up at Second Street for the sale of the textbooks and other supplies for the schools and communities..

The precedent set by Brother Patrick of serving simultaneously as President of Manhattan College and Visitor of the District was continued by his two successors. In 1873 Brother Paulian (Fanning) was appointed to succeed Brother Patrick. During his term as Visitor from 1873 to 1879, Brother Paulian opened schools in the parishes of Immaculate Conception (Melrose) and Our Lady of Sorrows in New York City as well as in St. Joseph’s parish in Detroit. In 1878 he added a juniorate to the novitiate at Westchester, the first of its kind in the country. As the result of a meeting in 1877 with representatives from the American and Canadian Districts, a commission was established to supervise the preparation of texts for the schools to be authored by various Brothers. The commission operated out of New York with Brother Paulian as its president. The result was a series of readers at various levels that was eventually followed by arithmetics, spellers, and texts for penmanship and drawing.

In 1879 Brother Justin was transferred from San Francisco to become Visitor of NewYork, a position he would hold for the next twenty years. Those years saw the opening of schools in the parishes of Immaculate Conception (14th St.), Cathedral, Holy Innocents, St. Alphonsus, and Holy Redeemer in New York City, Sacred Heart Academy in Westchester, and St. Patrick’s in Newburgh. Schools were opened in New England at Waltham, Lynn, Fall River and Chicopee in Massachusetts, Bangor in Maine, Burlington in Vermont and Dover in New Hampshire. There were new ventures at the outer limits of the District in Cleveland and Toledo, Ohio. In 1887 De La Salle Institute was moved to 59th Street while classes continued at Second Street as La Salle Academy. Manhattan College, with its strong program in Latin and Greek, was serving for all practical purposes as a training college for the candidates for the priesthood in the New York Archdiocese.

Concerned for a better formation for the Brothers, in 1883 Brother Justin moved the novitiate from Westchester to Amawalk with separate buildings for the juniors and novices, adding a scholasticate to enable young Brothers to qualify for teaching certificates. Brother Benezet Thomas (Kane) was appointed Director. In 1896, because of a malaria epidemic at Amawalk, the novitiate was moved briefly to Troy where in 1898 Brother Adjutor, who had been recruiting in Ireland, arrived with several novices from Castletown. Many of this group would have long careers in the District, among them Brothers Leo the Great as Visitor, Austin Julian, a distinguished catechist, Kilian James ("Jimmy the Doc"), Director of the Procure, together with Sixtus Julian and Jeremy Paul who worked for years in welfare institutions . As Brother Angelus Gabriel remarks in his history, “No subsequent period in the history of the New York District has been so richly blessed by the expansion of the work of the Brothers as that which took place during the twenty years of Brother Justin’s administration.”

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