What’s happening to our past?

For 21 years the landmarked St. Monica’s Roman Catholic Church on the York College campus in Jamaica was shunned by New York State, the City University of New York, and the Catholic Diocese.
The orphaned structure built in 1856, collapsed last week following torrential rains that struck the city. Once the decaying building’s side walls came down City and State agencies scrapped over the fate of the church where former Governor Mario Cuomo served as an altar boy.
City agencies including the Buildings Dept., Housing and Preservation Development Corp. and the Landmarks Preservation Commission clashed with the State’s Dormitory Authority and General Services Office, the landlord for State properties, over whether or not the church should be razed.
The City departments concluded that the structure should not be torn down, but shored up, while state agencies are reviewing all their options.
According to Gwenn Lee, a spokesperson for the Dormitory Authority, its engineers visited the site last week and called it "stable."
"We’ll discuss the future of the church with both City and State agencies," she said. "The decision about razing the building or not will be decided within the next two weeks.
The determining factor may be shaped by the fact that the brick church with its distinctive central campanile reminiscent of northern Italy is one of the oldest surviving examples of early Romanesque revival architecture left in New York.
"We prefer allowing the structure to stand," a spokesperson for the City Landmarks Preservation Commission said.
The property’s tortured history was described by Lee of the State General Services Office.
She said the property changed hands at least twice. Title passed from the Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens to the City in connection with the South Jamaica urban renewal project. Then it was taken over by the State.
"We checked the title of this property three or four years ago," Lee said, "when we put up scaffolding to shore up the structure. We checked it because the City Housing and Preservation Dept. issued a summons to us for an unsafe building."
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the City’s Buildings Dept., said it had inspected St. Monica’s Church after the collapse and determined that emergency demolition was not necessary, but that action should be taken to shore up the front facade.
"The decision, of course, is up to the true owners of the building," he said.
Dawn Kelly, director of public relations at York College, said York had tried over the years to encourage the state to appropriate funds to repair the church, but never succeeded.
According to Frank DeRosa, a spokesperson for the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens, it gave up the church in 1978 because of a declining Catholic population.
"We still own an adjoining cemetery," he said, "but not the church."
DeRosa had this to say about the decision to raze the church.
"Naturally we regret the loss of a church that once served its parish so well."
The heavy rains that brought down St. Monica’s also contributed to a roof collapse at the Heartshare Center, a day care center on 118 St. and 101 Ave. in Ozone Park. The collapse came five hours before 65 children, many of them developmentally disabled, were scheduled to arrive.