Harry Truman didn’t sleep here, but he did stop by for lunch-and a strategy session. That’s how politically connected the Ascension rectory was in the early 1950s. In November of 1951, Monsignor John FitzGerald, the distinguished and erudite new pastor, brokered a meeting between President Truman and Cardinal Stritch to gauge whether Catholics could be counted on to vote for soon-to-be Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson. The secret meeting was kept secret for many years. Later in the ’50s, FitzGerald used his connections to kill an off-ramp at East Avenue for the nearby Eisenhower (not Stevenson) Expressway.
As it was, the rectory saw its share of traffic on a too-narrow thoroughfare in a residential neighborhood. The rectory was a landmark with its red brick and stately white columns, exuding distinction and grandeur during a grander time for the Catholic Church.
Once upon that time, the rectory was packed with up to nine residents of the ordained variety. The first was named McDevitt. The last was named McNally. In between, there was also Ryan, McManus, Shields, Riordan, Gorman, White, Pritscher, L’Orange, Ploplis, Hickey, Joyce, Cross, Reynolds, Moulder, Baldonieri, Burke, and Jenks, just to name a few.
Rectory is a word of some rectitude-not a refectory, though it contained one. A lively community of priests lived-and ate-here, but the population decreased as the priest shortage increased, and gradually the spaces became used more and more for offices as “lay” people (the Church’s curious term of civvies) took over more and more of the duties of operating a busy parish.
The rectory became less a social center and more a curious appendage-and a moldy one at that. The stucture, cobbled together over the years (and moved once to this location) in pieces was always fighting itself and became less and less tenable as the years dragged it into the future.
A visible and endearing symbol of parish life or an obsolete vestige of an era long gone and unlikely to return? The parish accepted the reality of the latter and decided to tear it down. The offices moved across the street into the much sturdier former convent, and Father McNally moved into the tiny house-more of a parsonage than a rectory-directly south. Ironically, that house once housed one of Ascension’s large Irish Catholic families, one member of which, Bob Walsh, was a classmate of McNally’s and is also a priest.
What goes around comes around.
And what goes up, they say, must come down. Which is what happened last week as the not-quite-venerable and very moldy structure came crashing down. Nothing is eternal except God, no doubt all of the building’s former residents would attest to and homilize about if given the opportunity. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be missed.
After all, it saw its share of history. Built around the same time as the Titanic (1911), it certainly lasted longer.
Upward bound
Meanwhile, not everything comes down, and some people get a ringside seat. Like Lillian Markham, a former school teacher from Broadview and now a resident of Holley Court Terrace, who found herself with windows facing the RSC building as it rose on Lake Street. She took pictures of the progress as it headed skyward and shared the photos with us. Through cold and heat, the workmen labored. Lillian said she felt sorry for them, especially during the heat. The new building is now up and running and Holley Court Terrace has a new neighbor. Sooner than later they’ll have another new neighbor to the west-if the Whiteco building ever becomes a reality. Lillian is probably snapping shots as we speak.