Celebrating 79 Years:

Introduction to the Parish History: 1931-2010

The history of Annunciation Parish over the last 76 years is a rich story of community, dedication, and commitment. Like all stories of great communities, it is shaped and inspired by the people who made it part of their lives. Today, we Parishioners are privileged to enjoy their legacy. Annunciation began as a mission of Immaculate Conception Church in Tuckahoe — a rather inauspicious beginning
in a prefabricated building from Sears Roebuck. Through the dedication and hard work of our early parishioners, the original vision of its first Pastor Father Timothy J. Dugan, and
the enthusiastic commitment of all who followed them, the dream of a Church in Crestwood took shape. Over the course of the first 25 years, the founders’ vision became the reality enjoyed today — Annunciation’s four corners a Westchester Avenue and St. Eleanora’s Lane, comprised of our School, Convent, Rectory, and Church, the last cathedral-style stone Church built in the Archdiocese of New York.

Father Dugan, in many ways, was the driving force of the early history of Annunciation Parish. His indelible vision of Annunciation Church, which he unabashedly called “The Cathedral of Crestwood”, is our inheritance.

With the building of the School in 1950 and its major expansion in 1960, and the completion of the upper Church in 1957, the Parish expanded dramatically as young, World War II veterans, most first-generation Americans, and their exploding families, moved up from apartments primarily in the Bronx and Manhattan. Today many of their descendants belong to the Parish and attend the School. They remain committed to meeting the growing, and changing needs of our Parish family — and the larger concerns of discipleship and apostolic activities in our community and in our world. They form the strong foundation of a dynamic and replenishing group of people who continue to advance he reputation and life of this Parish.

Amazingly the descendants of some of the Parish’s founding families remain active in today’s Parish life several generations later — their great-grandchildren attend the School that they helped build and nourish.

This is our heritage here at Annunciation, and as we proudly celebrate 76 years since the Parish founding, we look forward to what we shall do, what we shall leave, what we shall build for those who
come after us.

May those who join the Parish Family of Annunciation in the coming
decades find this to be a strong and vibrant Christian community.

We pray for our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and all future generations.
May they love this Parish as much as we do, and be nurtured by it as we are!

Parish History: In the Beginning (1931-1949)

Like much of the City of Yonkers in the 1920’s, the Crestwood section was mostly farmland with very few houses. Gas lamps lighted its streets. The area just north of the present Church, along Scarsdale Road, near what is now St. Vladimir’s Seminary. Crestwood was a little country community — people walked everywhere and knew everybody in the area.

In Crestwood, most of the few Catholics who had settled here attended Immaculate Conception Church in Tuckahoe, others St. Joseph’s Church in Bronxville. Crestwood, a stop on the New York Central Railroad, built circa 1910, would soon benefit from the suburban migration from the city.

In 1927, a few Catholics met at each other’s homes to discuss ways and means of having Church services in Crestwood because traveling was a problem for many of them. But, more important, the religious education of their children was becoming a concern to them. Father Edward J. Beary, Pastor of Immaculate Conception Church in Tuckahoe, was invited to guide the discussions. Father Beary promised that “before the snow flies, you will have a Church” and in November a small brown building, ordered from Sears Roebuck, was set up on the grounds of St. Eleanora’s Home (now St. Vladimir’s Seminary), an orphanage run by the Sisters of Charity on Scarsdale Road.

On Christmas Day in 1927, Father Beary celebrated the first Mass in Crestwood in what he named St. Patrick’s Chapel. In May 1931, Father Timothy J. Dugan was appointed the first Pastor.

On May 10, 1931, Father Dugan, Joseph Hayes, and Ralph Feriola (father of Gloria Bantz, grandfather of Kay Stipicevic, and great grandfather of John, Jim and Sarah Stipicevic) met with His Eminence Patrick Cardinal Hayes and His Excellency Bishop Dunn at Cardinal Hayes’ residence at 452 Madison Avenue and incorporated the Church of the Annunciation of Crestwood, changing the name from St. Patrick’s Chapel. Joseph Hayes and Ralph Feriola were appointed lay trustees of the Parish Corporation. Our history had begun.

On May 23, 1931, nineteen children, instructed by several parents, celebrated their First Communion in the Chapel. Seeing how inadequate the little Sears Roebuck chapel on the Iselin farm would soon become, Father Dugan began to dream of a permanent Church building and School. His vision would grow in scope and reality over the next decade. From their first days, Annunciation Parishioners were known for their generosity, especially to their Church and School. Most of the day-to-day work of the Parish and all of the fund raising was done through the societies established in 1931, the Holy Name Society for the men and Ladies Guild for the women.

On October16, 1931, the Ladies Guild held their first card party at the Asbury Methodist Episcopal Community House. Towards the end of the 1930’s, bazaars were held in Turkey Hollow along the Bronx River Parkway, and several card parties were held at the Fire House that was across from the Asbury Church back then, as well as on the property of St. Eleanora’s Home.

The first Communion Breakfast of the Ladies Guild took place at the original Birch Brook Inn in Bronxville — in later years a Ben Riley’s and Patricia Murphy’s restaurants. Mrs. Joseph Hayes, wife of one of the first trustees, was he first president of the Guild. It is a sign of those times that we don’t know her first name.

By 1932, Father Dugan was able to buy land for a permanent Church on the northwest corner of Westchester Avenue and St. Eleanora’s Lane, using money raised by the Ladies Guild. They were successful entrepreneurs even back then! Several years would elapse before Father Dugan was given permission by the Archdiocese to begin building what we now call the Lower Church. But he continued to execute his ambitious vision to build a magnificent Church. In 1933, he bought the house at 350 Hollywood Avenue for the Rectory, which continued in use until the present one was built in 1966.

The Parish continued to grow and in November 17, 1934, fifty children were confirmed at the first Confirmation ceremony held in Crestwood. Meanwhile, sketches were made and full plans drawn for the lower and upper Church building. Father Dugan planned to build the lower Church so that it could be used while he continued to raise the funds to build the upper Church. Father Dugan did an extraordinary amount of research on ecclesiastical art and architecture. He had sense of art that can still be discerned in both the upper and lower Church.

Father Dugan had an aversion to the low artistic level and insignificance of many religious articles at that time. He was well ahead of his day. We don’t know where he found the wood-carver, Frank Feigeler, or the architect, Gustave E. Steinback, but the lower Church is certainly a testimony to their artistry, as well as to the creative mind of Father Dugan. He wanted the Church sculptures to be warm and strong, and commissioned Mr. Feigeler to carve in oak the magnificent Stations of the Cross, all the statues, and the masterpiece triptych behind the altar in the lower Church, as well as the statue of
St. John the Baptist, now in the upper Church baptistery.

On May 10, 1936, five years from the day the Parish was incorporated, a ground-breaking ceremony for our new Church building was held on the spot where the lower Church altar would be situated. A silver spade inscribed, “Fifth Anniversary of the Annunciation Church, Crestwood”, was presented to Father Dugan by the Parishioners.

On November 22, 1936, six months after the ground-breaking, the lower Church was dedicated by The Most Reverend Stephen J. Donahue, Auxiliary Bishop of New York. In the same year of 1936, Father Eugene A. Murtha was appointed Assistant Pastor.

Gloria Feriola, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Feriola, and one of the first First Communicants of Annunciation in 1931, was married to Norman Bantz on November 16, 1946. Still Crestwood residents as are some of their children and grandchildren, they just celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary at Annunciation in May 2006. Coincidental with the date of their marriage in 1946 was the Saturday Evening Post Magazine issue with the cover of Norman Rockwell’s Crestwood train station.

In 1937, Father Dugan gave the Sears Roebuck building St. Patrick’s Chapel on Scarsdale Road to the John N. Dunbar American Legion Post, which later moved the building to Colonial Heights, where it remained until a few years ago. Until the 1940’s dedicated women and men of the Parish volunteered to give religious instruction to the children, who would parade up from Public School No. 15 to the lower Church every Wednesday afternoon in a ritual called Release Time. In the early forties, the Dominican Sisters of Newburgh offered to come once a week from Holy Family in New Rochelle to instruct the children.

In July 1943, Father Dugan purchased the Crowley house (the present Convent) to be used as a lower School and Convent. That same year, Father Dugan also arrange for the Dominican nuns to teach the children of Annunication Parish. Sister Francis Rose, O.P. became the first principal, assisted by Sister Jean Imelda, O.P. who taught kindergarten through the third grade.

In 1944, Father Dugan purchased the house next door to the Convent and converted it to four classrooms, 7th and 8th grades downstairs and 5th and 6th grades upstairs. In 1946, Sister Marie Emmanuel, O.P. started a children’s choir, which is still in existence.

While raising the money to build Annunciation, the generous Parishioners also managed to participate in a fund drive for Stepinac High School in 1947, contributing $24,500 (exceeding their goal by $8,500) to the Archdiocesan School. And generosity didn’t come in financial form alone. Since the mid-1940’s, the Ladies of Charity have been an active and powerful force in the outreach activities of the Parish. The early leaders and members were Jeannette Flynn (mother of Father John E. Flynn, MaryEllen Loveless, and Jean Edson), Mary Maloney, Helen Garst, Marie Hoffman, Helen Shea, Helen Furgiuele, Carmen Campenella, Margaret Dunn, Marie Dirr, Edith Doran, and many others.

The Ladies of Charity, dedicated and dynamic women, organized funding for the care and visitation of the most downtrodden and desolate of God’s needy — the mentally handicapped, the lost and the troubled, the aged and alone, the sick and dying — at places like the County Home for the Aged, Children’s village (Father Benedict Groeschel was then Chaplain), House of Calvary, Rosary Hill, and the Mentally Retarded throughout the Archdiocese of New York (Father Cox, who served here at Annunciation, was Chaplain of a Home for the Retarded in Rockland, which the Ladies visited regularly).

Still active to this day — the Ladies of Charity have a full complement of outreach activities that follow the lead of their predecessors and follow the spirit of St. Vincent de Paul, the spiritual founder of the movement. In June 1948, the first eighth grade graduation took place. The graduates were John Manning, William Pagen, Richard Burke, Peter Garst, Robert Leigner, James Hanifer, Paul Reilly, Barbara Jean Anderson, Mary Ellen Flynn (now MaryEllen Loveless, still a Parishioner), Rita Dveau, Jane Kennedy, Carol Maloney, Marianne Miller, Nancy Wallace, Maureen Wright, and Julia Budenz (daughter of Louis Budenz, former editor of the Communist Daily Worker, who had returned to the Catholic Church).

next page: Annunciation Parish History cont'd: ground is broken for the School

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