page_title: St. Jean Baptiste Roman Catholic Church
section_title: 1987–present: Renovation
hierarchical_section_title: St. Jean Baptiste Roman Catholic Church / History / 1987–present: Renovation
caption_attribution_description: English: The Roman Catholic Church of St. Jean Baptiste, located at 1067-1071 Lexington Avenue (also known as 184 East 76th Street), in the Lenox Hill neighborhood of the Upper East Side, New York City, was built in 1910-13 and was designed by Nicholas Serracino, inspired by Italian Mannerism. It features a 175-foot dome. A renovation was undertaken by Hardy Holtzman Pfeifer from 1996-96 in which the somber interior was decorated in bright colors by Felix Chavez, and new stained class windows by Patrick Clark were installed. (Sources: Guide to NYC Landmarks (4th ed.), From Abyssinian to Zion (2004) and AIA Guide to NYC (5th ed.))
context_page_description: St. Jean Baptiste Roman Catholic Church, also known as the Église St-Jean-Baptiste, is a parish church in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York at the corner of Lexington Avenue and East 76th Street in the Lenox Hill neighborhood of the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. The parish was established in 1882 to serve the area's French Canadian immigrant population and remained the French-Canadian National Parish until 1957. It has been staffed by the Fathers of the Blessed Sacrament since 1900.
  Financier Thomas Fortune Ryan, a Catholic convert in his teens, bankrolled its construction. It was designed by Nicholas Serracino, an Italian architect practicing in New York, who, inspired by the Italian Mannerists, combined elements of the Italian Renaissance Revival and Classical Revival architectural styles, Seracino won first prize for the design at the Esposizione Internazionale delle Industrie e del Lavoro in Turin, Italy in 1911. It is his only surviving church in the city.
  The church is one of the few Catholic churches in New York City with a dome, and only one of two – the other being St.
context_section_description: In 1989 stones from the facade fell onto the Lexington Avenue sidewalk. No one was injured, but the church had to erect a wooden shelter to protect pedestrians from potential future incidents. That led to the restoration of the exterior over the next year, part of a $6 million campaign that began in 1987. Work on the stained glass windows proved particularly challenging because the original installers had forced them into spaces too small for them, making them hard to remove. It was necessary to hire more than the usual number of restorers, work overtime and locate the workshop in the dome rather than offsite in order to meet the church's fall 1997 deadlines. For several months during that time services were held in a nearby school auditorium.  The renovations were overseen by the firm of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer.
  It was financed by the sale of land and air rights over a building formerly used as a convent by the sisters of Notre Dame, who subsequently moved into the upper floors of the rectory. A developer built The Siena, a 73-unit, 31-story luxury condominium tower, on the site. It has been praised by a group of architects including Robert A.M. Stern for complementing the architecture of the adjacent rectory by echoing the church's bell towers and offering "rich sculptural form and lively surface patterning ... to a neighborhood burdened by so many uninspired blocklike apartment buildings"
  In 2002, a longtime parishioner, Maryanne Macaluso, alleged that the new pastor, Father Mario Marzocchi, had groped and propositioned her after offering her a secretarial position. After she complained to another priest and took paid leave due to the stress of having to see Father Mazocchi every day, the order had him evaluated by a psychologist who found nothing wrong with him, and then transferred him to a parish in Florida. When she returned to work, she claims the church retaliated against her by cutting her work hours from full-time to part-time after several weeks and giving duties she normally performed to others. When she asked the replacement pastor, Father Anthony Schueller, for full-time work, he informed her that the church could not afford to do so and she requested a letter of termination, putting her in danger of being evicted from her apartment.
  After the state denied her unemployment claim on the grounds that she had left work voluntarily, Macaluso filed suit against the church, the order, the Archdiocese of New York, Cardinal Edward Egan, and Father Marzocchi. She alleged negligent hiring and hostile environment sexual harassment. In 2007 Judge Louis York of the New York Supreme Court dismissed her claims, without ruling on the facts, against all but Father Marzocchi, who had not responded.
caption: View from the southwest (2014)
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