The Genevieve Chapel once located within the now-closed St. Ignatius Retreat House in Manhasset has been deconstructed by the Jesuit order and packed into boxes, awaiting transport to its new home at Fordham University, officials said Tuesday.
Guthrie Garvin, who represents the Jesuit order on behalf of Massie Knakal Commercial Real Estate, said the chapel, which is located on the 33-acre Inisfada estate off Searingtown Road, would be sent to Fordham before his client closes on a proposed deal to sell the mansion.
“It’s all going to be completed before the property closes,” Garvin said.
A Fordham spokeswoman confirmed the university will receive the chapel, but said a space for it on the school’s Rose Hill campus in the Bronx has not yet been found.
The chapel is considered historically important to some Catholics. In 1936, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli – who went on to become Pope Pius XII – stayed at Inisfada for three months while on tour in the United States and celebrated mass in the Genevieve Chapel.
Garvin declined to comment on the process by which the chapel was deconstructed, when work began on breaking down the chapel, or whether the work involved required building permits from the Village of North Hills.
“I cannot comment on anything else,” Garvin said.
Village of North Hills Building Inspector Don Alberto said he has not visited the property in more than a year, but any work involving the structural elements of the building, such as window or wall removal, would require permits from the village.
Alberto said no application for work to the house has been submitted to the village, nor has any permit been issued for the house.
Rev. Vincent Cooke, who is overseeing the sale of the 87-room mansion and surrounding property for the Jesuit order’s New York province, also declined comment on the deconstruction of the chapel or specific details about the negotiation for the property, nor would he confirm the identity of the buyer, reportedly a land developer based in China.
Cooke said in an interview with Blank Slate Media last month the negotiations for the acquisition of the estate, which closed June 2, were going as planned.
“We have a legally binding agreement that we entered into in good faith with the people we’re in negotiation with and we intend to honor our obligations,” Cooke said.
It was unclear whether the potential buyer plans to maintain the mansion located on the property, build around it or demolish it outright, but the property has zoning for two houses per acre.
Local Manhasset civic associations have been meeting in recent months to find a buyer of the property who would keep the building, which has housed a variety of religious groups and addiction-help organizations in the past.
The Jesuit order is also in negotiations to sell the 15-acre Mt. Manresa Retreat House property in Staten Island.
In an e-mail to Fordham University obtained by Blank Slate Media, alumnus and Staten Island resident Barbara Sanchez said the Jesuit order has been secretive about the negotiations and unwilling to work with residents who have collected 3,500 signatures in a petition presented to borough hall on June 26 calling for the Jesuits to keep the house standing. Sanchez said an additional 500 were collected since then.
“Don’t think I don’t understand the economics of the situation. I do,” Sanchez wrote in the e-mail. “The Jesuits needed money. But It didn’t have to be this way. There were other options open to selling the property and leaving the community and the beautiful land whole. They instead chose a secret sale, and leave the community out of it. That is morally wrong and corrupt.”
“I would have preferred to remember them fondly and think of all the good things they did for the thousands who visited Mount Manresa (including myself),” she added. “Unfortunately, hurt and pain is the legacy they have chosen to leave us with.”
The Jesuits maintained Inisfada as a retreat house for more than 50 years, but officials said high operating costs led the order to sell off most of the 300-acre property and putting it on the housing market for $49 million a little more than a year ago.
The 87-room, 37-chimney retreat house, named “Inisfada” after the Gaelic word for “Long Island,” was built between 1916-1920 for industrialist Nicholas Brady and his wife Genevieve.
“[Genevieve] was really the motor behind the decorating of the house,” said Rev. Tom Evrard, a Jesuit administrator who had been involved with St. Ignatius for more than 20 years. “She was very meticulous. She demanded everything be of the highest grade and quality.”
The property cost $2.3 million to build and served as the Bradys’ summer home. They had residences on 5th Avenue in Manhattan as well as a villa in Rome.
The Bradys had no children but were devout Catholics, Evrard said, and the couple developed a close relationship with the Vatican as a result of living in Italy.
“This is a really important part of American history here, not just Long Island history,” Lou Paolillo, a spokesman for the non-profit group Community Wellness Centers of America, told Blank Slate Media last month. “These very wealthy people built these big country homes and the Jesuits really preserved it well, it looks just like it did 80 years ago. The architect that built it built one house in New York, so if you kill that, you kill a part of American history.”
Paolillo said the Jesuit order made a verbal agreement with the Community Wellness Centers of America to reconsider the sale of the mansion, but neither Garvin nor Cooke could confirm whether the deal ever took place.
Robert Aquino, an administrative assistant for Community Wellness Centers of America who is overseeing the group’s finances in a potential acquisition of the house’s negotiation rights, said Tuesday that the organization has not made a formal offer for the house because the Jesuit order has not returned its calls seeking to join the negotiations.
“We were told they were interested, but unless we can sit down with them we can’t make them another offer,” Aquino said.
Paolillo said last month the Community Wellness Centers of America is willing to match the offer the Jesuits have received for the property to continue the mansion’s work as a retreat house, a plan supported by Manhasset civic associations.
Village of North Hills Mayor Marvin Nattis said he met with representatives from the prospective buyer at the mansion three weeks ago but also refused to disclose the company’s name, adding that the Community Wellness Centers of America should not try to interfere with the Catholic church’s business.
“They’re trying to undermine whatever the Catholic church is doing with the people who are buying it and the church is not going to breach its contract, and I think it’s inappropriate for them to try and breach the contract,” Nattis said.
Paolillo said groups that have used the retreat house, including surrounding parishes and various addiction help organizations, have joined the effort to keep Inisfada standing.
The Council of Greater Manhasset Civic Associations Inc. had success in preserving the Christ Episcopal Church’s parish house, located at the corner of Plandome Road, when officials had found a builder to demolish it for a senior housing development.
Richard Bentley, president of the Council of Greater Manhasset Civic Associations, said last month that his group was able to reach a compromise with the Town of North Hempstead to split the building’s zoning for commercial and church use, and would like to see a similar fate for Inisfada.
“When minds are in need of doing something to save an architectural historic building, we are able to do it,” Bentley said.
Paolillo said Monday the Community Wellness Centers of America planned to file for state historic landmark status, a process which would require the consent of the Jesuit order and prospective buyer, but Bentley wrote in an email that was sent to the Manhasset Times that a landmark application supported by the Community Wellness Centers of America would put public pressure on the negotiations and “may present unique circumstances.”
Aquino said the Community Wellness Centers of America has found another financier, the non-profit technology firm Synergy First International, as well as other groups who’d like to keep Inisfada open as a retreat house and addiction recovery facility.
But he said the Jesuit order’s secretive nature about the negotiation process is making that goal seem unattainable.
“You’ve done so much good for people in the entire 60 years they were there, and what do you say now, you’re going to walk away from everybody?” Aquino said. “That’s unconscionable.”
