For years, one of Harlem’s major flashpoints has been, and remains, the sale of Black churches. For many, the decline of a church and its sale, represents a dissolution of the Black presence in Harlem. For others, there is the loss of a cultural as well as religious space. Some focus on the material presence of the church – primarily as manifested in the architecture or interior decoration/design.

The Catholic church has undergone a remarkable shrinkage in the last few years. In 2007 the archdiocese decided to close or merge 21 parishes. Then, in 2014, the archdiocese — which encompasses Manhattan, Staten Island, the Bronx, and seven other New York State counties — embarked on another deeper series of cuts, including parish closings and mergers. This striking consolidation was driven in part by financial constraints (partly due to the financial challenges of defending and paying out in sexual abuse cases. In other parishes, the changing demographics and dwindling church attendance influenced the archdiocese’s decision to close/or merge.

The consequence of all this is not only a surplus of buildings to be sold – Harlem’s 118th street St.Thomas Church (shown below) was sold and deconsecrated – but also a surplus of religious art and decoration, like the stained glass that once adorned St. Thomas’s facade windows.

In a warehouse on Staten Island, the Archdiocese of New York stores altars, statuary and other relics that can be reused in churches around the world. The 17,000-square-foot storehouse stuffed to the rafters with artifacts salvaged from scores of churches deconsecrated and sold since 2004. Known as the Patrimony Warehouse, the facility was established to preserve the sorts of relics that sometimes wound up in antique stores, the homes of parishioners or the trash.

In addition to storing sacred items like altars and incense censers, which according to canon law are permitted to be only in places of worship, the warehouse is a repository of secular artifacts like stained-glass windows.

The pieta (above) is one example of material rescued from St. Lucy’s Church in East Harlem after the church’s deconsecration in 2017. Laypeople are not permitted to shop at the warehouse, and there are generally no listed prices. When an artifact is transferred to a parish, the archdiocese typically asks for a donation commensurate with that parish’s means.

The New York Times notes that:

Since 2007, the number of parishes in the archdiocese has shrunk to 284 from 403. In that time, 30 churches have been deconsecrated for secular use in Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island, leaving 172 Catholic churches in those boroughs. And the consolidation continues.

Whenever possible, new religious homes are found for salvaged relics. In 2008, some 30 stained-glass windows from the imposing neo-Gothic Church of St. Thomas the Apostle on West 118th Street in Harlem, designed by the Mayer of Munich studio in Germany, were removed and reconditioned after a preservation campaign failed. Those windows were later installed upstate, in the new Saint Kateri Tekakwitha Church, in LaGrangeville. Other windows went to St. Brigid’s Church in the East Village. And last year, 14 smaller windows from St. Thomas depicting angels were shipped to a church in Taiwan. (As for the 1907 church complex of St. Thomas the Apostle, it was sold to Artimus Construction for $6 million in 2012; the church was truncated, and its remaining front portion now serves as a vaulted event space called Harlem Parish.)

Two of the most striking items in the warehouse are a pair of white-marble angels that once flanked the high altar at the Church of All Saints, on Madison Avenue and 129th Street. The splendid Italian Gothic Revival-style church, built starting in the 1880s after designs by the architect James Renwick Jr., is sometimes called the St. Patrick’s of Harlem — a reference to St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, which Mr. Renwick also designed. All Saints is a city landmark, a designation that protects its exterior, but not its interior.

In 2015, the parish of All Saints merged with that of the Church of St. Charles Borromeo, on West 141st Street, and in 2017 All Saints was deconsecrated.

That’s when the Patrimony Warehouse came into play. After a church is deconsecrated and made available for secular purposes and possible sale, canon law holds that all sacred relics and furnishings must be removed for use in other sacred edifices or stored in ecclesiastical custody. If the church’s altars cannot be removed, they must be destroyed.

After the deconsecration of All Saints, a comprehensive inventory of its valuable objects was made. Before disassembly, the component parts of large items like the high altar were carefully labeled, photographed and documented, so each artifact could one day be put back together like a giant, sacred jigsaw puzzle. Photographs and descriptions of each item were compiled in a binder that serves as a shopping catalog for warehouse visitors.

The dismantling of the church’s interior was halted by the Covid-19 pandemic, and finally completed early this year. Workers disassembled the great marble altar with power saws fitted with masonry blades. To reach the clerestory windows high above the pews, some four stories of scaffolding were erected inside the church, and most of the stained-glass windows were taken out — over the objections of preservationists — and replaced with clear glass. The city Landmarks Preservation Commission approved the removal of stained glass and exterior sculptural masonry associated with religious imagery.

The altar and stained glass now reside in the warehouse. The 16-foot-high gilded crucifix is stored in crated sections, is shown, above.

“The pipe organ” — built by the Roosevelt Organ Works in 1892 — “was the last piece to go out” of the church, Mr. Amatrudo said. “It’s being reconditioned and will go to St. Paul the Apostle,” a church on West 59th Street.

In addition, a small wooden altar of sacrifice was sent to Moore Catholic High School, on Staten Island. The church’s richly carved pews, among the city’s most elaborate, went to a church in Chicago. And marble statues of Joseph and Mary landed in Bridgeport, Conn. (The All Saints complex, which includes an attached parish school and parish house, was sold in March for $10.85 million to the developer CSC Coliving. A modernization of the school and conversion of the church into a school auditorium, designed by Tang Studio Architect, is underway, and the Capital Preparatory Harlem Charter School plans to move into the two buildings next fall on a long-term lease.)

Back in the warehouse, Mr. Amatrudo is eager to use two darkly varnished vestment cabinets from All Saints to enhance his merchandise display. He has arranged the cabinets — neo-Gothic beauties made of quarter-sawn oak — in a felicitous manner in the entry chamber and plans to leave their doors open, filling them with vestments to make a good first impression on shoppers.

“These cabinets have style,” he said proudly. “So when you walk in the front door, this is what greets you.”

As Seen On East 120th Street