St. Lucy's Roman Catholic Church
Hoboken, Hudson County
Streets
founded 18__, built 1895
Jersey
City and Hoboken have more than their fair share of interesting
old churches; Saint Lucy's very tall tower and the several fine
Romanesque
Revival elements of its design are two of the major contributors to
that impression. St Lucy's was built in 1895, but its survival appears
in doubt, as the building is currently unused. It sits about on the
boundary between Jersey City and Hoboken, just a block or two from
the road leading to the Holland Tunnel.
It was designed by Jeremiah O'Rourke, a Newark architect who was responsible
for at least a dozen other Catholic churches in the state. The tower
is quite similar to that of the Church of the Sacred Heart in Bloomfield,
which O'Rourke also designed. It is also characteristic of a number
of midwestern post offices of the 1880s and 1890s; not surprisingly,
O'Rourke served for a time as the Supervising Architect of the U.S.,
in which position he was responsible for the construction of several
post offices which bear an affinity with St. Lucy's and the Bloomfield
church.