A North Hills official said Tuesday that the removal of the Genevieve Chapel from the St. Ignatius Retreat House last month, which included the removal and replacement of stained glass windows, did not require a building permit because the work did not change the structural elements to the building.
Don Alberto, the superintendent of the village’s building department, said the project would have required a building permit if the work included the removal of a wall or a change to the size of the opening into which windows are built.
“Their architect called and said they were taking out stained glass and putting in regular glass,” Alberto said. “If it’s absolute direct replacement, we don’t take a permit for that. But if you change the opening size in any way, it triggers a permit.”
The Genevieve Chapel, considered historically important to some Catholics because Pope Pius XII celebrated mass there while on tour in the United States in 1936 while still a cardinal, was deconstructed some time after the St. Ignatius Retreat House closed in early June and readied for donation to Fordham University’s Rose Hill Campus.
A Fordham spokeswoman said Tuesday the school had not yet found a space on campus for the chapel’s placement.
The 87-room, 37-chimney retreat house, named “Inisfada” after the Gaelic word for “Long Island,” was built for $2.3 million between 1916-1920 for industrialist Nicholas Brady and his wife Genevieve, who also had residences in Manhattan and Rome.
Following her death in 1938, Genevieve Brady left Inisfada to the Jesuit order, who used the Searingtown Road property as a seminary and retreat house for regional parishes and addiction rehabilitation groups.
The Jesuits maintained the property for more than 50 years, but officials said high operating costs led the order to sell off most of the 300-acre property and put the rest including the house on the market for $49 million a little more than a year ago.
Rev. Vincent Cooke, who is overseeing the sale of the property for the Jesuit order’s New York province, has declined comment on specific details about the negotiation for the property, nor would he confirm the identity of the buyer, reportedly a land developer based in China.
But Cooke said in an interview with Blank Slate Media last month that the negotiations for the acquisition of the estate were going as planned.
Since the retreat house’s closing on June 2, the Council for Greater Manhasset Civic Associations has worked with an possible alternative buyer for the property, the Queens-based Community Wellness Centers of America, which seeks to continue the mansion’s use as a retreat house.
Community Wellness Centers spokesman Lou Paolillo said in early June that the center’s financiers were willing to match the offer the Jesuits had received for the property and that a verbal agreement had been made with the order to reconsider the sale.
To prolong the Jesuits’ negotiations with their prospective buyer, the Council for Greater Manhasset Civic Associations began an application process to designate Inisfada as a state landmark.
Though the application would require the consent of the Jesuit order, Richard Bentley, the association’s president, said the organization planned to submit its application with the Community Wellness Centers of America’s consent in an effort to subject the property to a review process that would seek alternatives from demolition.
Bentley added the organization was also investigating the details of the mansion’s donation to the Jesuits from Genevieve Brady, to learn whether the property’s deed includes a restrictive covenant or any other clause that would require the Jesuits to maintain the property.
Brady said the civic association also plans to submit a petition with signatures from members of the North Hills community, but the online service the group has used to gather signatures has not worked properly, leading to complaints.
Bentley said the civic association may also organize what he called a “media event,” such as a rally or picketing at either Inisfada or the Jesuit order’s Manhattan offices, but “we’ve got a lot of planning left to do.”
