OUR
LADY OF THE ROSARY
7 State between Pearl and Whitehall Streets, March 30, 1937
Abbott File 222
Once part of a row of late-eighteenth-century mansions, this sole survivor recalls the time when New York's wealthiest families lived at Manhattan's southern tip. With their northward exodus, the building functioned as a hotel until 1886, when it became the Mission of Our Lady of the Rosary, a home for immigrant girls.
Abbott's photograph juxtaposes this relic of federal New York with the South Ferry Building (circa 1915), whose street-level design sensitively complemented the mansion's facade. To emphasize the harmony between old and new, Abbott carefully eliminated the tenements, to the right, and the Ninth Avenue Elevated, behind her, which curved along State Street to its final destination at South Ferry.
A 1965 restoration of the mission removed the dormers and added a railing at the roofline. With the 1940 demolition of the El and the 1960s proliferation of box-and-plaza skyscrapers, the mansion now seems stranded on a too-wide street amidst oversized neighbors. In 1975, the mission was dedicated as the Rectory of the Shrine of St. Elizabeth Seton, after America's first canonized saint, who was born on Staten Island.