Tag Archives: Patrick Keely

Fourth Avenue’s Church of the Redeemer to be Torn Down

From Francis Morrone, architectural writer and historian, I have just learned that the Church of the Redeemer, built in 1866, on Fourth Avenue and Pacific Street in Brooklyn is going to be torn down.

Morrone says that it is one of his favorite churches designed by Patrick Keely, who designed hundreds of churches. Obviously, it is not a designated landmark. “If it’s not torn down, it will probably fall down on its own,” he writes on Facebook.

“I like the play of volumes, the intimate scale, the good detailing, the side garden. I love imagining the church in 1866, when it was slightly more bucolic in these parts, and today, when the church shares its sidewalk with the subway entrance,” he adds. “And I love the mosaic sign for this church down in the subway station. It looks to me like Keely had a somewhat larger budget than he usually did with his Catholic churches. I’d love to see it with its stone cleaned.”

Francis Morrone is an architectural historian and author of Architectural Guidebook of Brooklyn. Morrone’s essays on architecture have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, City Journal, American Arts Quarterly, the New Criterion and the New York Times. In April 2011 he was named by Travel + Leisure magazine as one of the 13 best tour guides in the world.

He thinks a high rise condo is going to be built in its stead.