Sacred Heart Convent

The Sacred Heart Convent (completed 1896) is one of three principle buildings on its site; it is flanked by the Sacred Heart Church (completed ca. 1852) to the east and the St. Martin de Porres Academy (formerly Sacred Heart School, completed 1894) to the west. The three buildings command an entire square block in the Trowbridge Square Historic District (entered into the National Register of Historic Places in 1985), an otherwise primarily residential neighborhood. Only the school building is still in use on this property. The convent—which was converted to the Columbus House homeless shelter in 1982—has been abandoned since 2002, and the church since 2009. Both buildings are in disrepair, with boarded and broken windows. The streetscape remains dilapidated despite multiple neighborhood renewal proposals (4, 5) in the last twenty years.

Sisters of Mercy, 1897 - ca. 1980

Columbus House Homeless Shelter, 1982 - 2002

Vacant, 2002 - present

The convent and school buildings replaced twelve wood-frame houses (and their outbuildings) (19) on the 1.52 acre plot (20). These houses were likely products of the original Spireworth/Trowbridge Square development of the mid-nineteenth century. Records from the White Brothers real estate law firm show that the acquisition of these properties by the Sacred Heart Parish was gradual, taking place mostly throughout the 1880s and into the mid-1890s (7). Four private houses remained along Portsea Street even after the convent's construction, as shown in the 1911 atlas (21), but they were purchased by the church and torn down by 1924, as evidenced by the 1924 Sanborn map.

Simeon Jocelyn, one of the aforementioned founders of Spireworth (Trowbridge Square), was a reformer, minister and abolitionist. He infused his views into the neighborhood plan: it was seen as “a model residential community for members of the city's low-income population, a temperate and egalitarian village populated by blacks and whites living in peaceful harmony”(3, page 2). Some land deeds contained restrictive covenants barring racial discrimination in property sales. However, most black residents had relocated by the mid-1870s, concurrent with an influx of Irish immigrants due to nearby railroad work (3).

A strong Irish Catholic community, and by the early twentieth century through World War II, an incoming Italian Catholic community, explains the demand for a Catholic parish in the neighborhood. The church building was extant since ca. 1852 as “South Church, Congregational” (a form of Protestant) until it was purchased by the diocese in 1874 (6). The church then purchased the adjacent land for the future convent and school throughout the 1880s and into the 1890s (7), first adding a rectory directly south of the church in 1890, then constructing the Sacred Heart School on the west side of the property in 1894, and finally completing the convent in 1896 (8). The Sisters of Mercy, who taught at the Sacred Heart School, moved into the convent building in 1897 after living for several years in other buildings, likely the original houses on the property. Apart from a convent fire in 1899 that claimed the life of one Sister (9), no events of import are reported during the convent’s early decades.

The Trowbridge Square district saw a decline in its Catholic population following World War II as black and Hispanic families moved in, and there was a subsequent decline in the entire neighborhood population in the 1960s due to the bankruptcy of the railroad and the construction of highways replacing houses (10, p17). By 1972, the City of New Haven Redevelopment Agency had displaced 276 families and publicized their intention to displace 1043 more (10, p18).

Enrollment at the Sacred Heart School was cut in half between 1965-69 (10, p19), decreasing the demand for teachers. At the same time, a national decline in the number of young women becoming nuns meant that the Sacred Heart Convent was underoccupied. As the St. Martin de Porres Academy recounts in their centennial book, these factors led to the decision that the remaining Sisters would be of more use elsewhere, and they left by 1980 (10, p21).

As of 1982, the Sacred Heart Parish leased the convent building to the newly founded Columbus House, a New Haven homeless shelter, for nominal cost. A number of renovations and upgrades noted on permits (see documents) took place throughout the 1980s, including room partitions, new windows, and a front awning (11). At its founding, Columbus House provided 35 beds, expanded to 48 beds in 1984 (12, p2, 4) and finally to 52 beds by the early 2000s (12, p12). In 1994, Sacred Heart began increasing monthly rents, reaching $1000/month by 2000. In that year, they issued a legal notice to Columbus House to vacate the building by the following summer (13). It is unclear the status of the non-profit from 2001-2002, but by November 2002 Columbus House had moved to a new, custom building elsewhere in New Haven (12, p12).

The Sacred Heart Convent building has been unoccupied since 2002 and the exterior is currently in disrepair, with boarded-up windows and cracked glass. The church, too, was abandoned in 2009 when the Sacred Heart Parish merged with Saint Anthony’s and moved into their space on Washington Avenue (14). An official decree by the Archdiocese of Hartford declaring the merger was not signed until 2017 (15).

The Archdiocese of Hartford, which owns the property, put it on the market in March 2010 (16). A subsequent offer by the Communidad Cristiana de Restauración a las Naciones in March 2011 seemed promising (17), as the City of New Haven even approved of rezoning to split the church and convent into one property and St. Martin de Porres Academy, still in operation, into another (18). However, no further reporting on the matter has been found and the property remains unoccupied and in the hands of the Archdiocese.

In 2013, the City Planning Department of New Haven proposed a Hill-to-Downtown plan with the goal of transforming the surroundings into a walkable mixed-use neighborhood. Suggestions were made for the revitalization of the Sacred Heart campus. No further evidence of action on this plan can be found (5).

The Sacred Heart campus occupies a full square block on the border of the Trowbridge Square and Hill districts. The convent is located in between the Sacred Heart Church and Rectory to its east and the Saint Martin de Porres Academy (formerly Sacred Heart School) to its west. Between the convent and school is a somewhat overgrown parking lot, with a basketball court and garage in similar states of disrepair at the south end near Portsea Street. Together, the three main buildings physically dominate an otherwise primarily residential Columbus Avenue and Trowbridge neighborhood. Local housing includes single- and multi-family modest wood-framed homes, mostly from the latter two thirds of the nineteenth century (3). Directly across Columbus Avenue is a large open parking lot in place of the former Yale School of Nursing, and Yale’s hospital and medical school campus proceed further north along Cedar Street.

Sacred Heart’s square block comprises the northeast corner of the original Trowbridge Square Historic District. Laid out by Simeon Jocelyn and Isaac Thompson in 1830, the neighborhood (originally called Spireworth and then Mount Pleasant) was to be a miniature model of New Haven’s nine-square plan, in this case with Trowbridge Square as the center public green. Jocelyn, and by the 1850s several others, developed the land primarily as working-class housing in the Greek and Colonial Revival styles. Some streets include several identical houses in a row due to speculative ventures (3).

In 1972, the larger neighborhood of “The Hill” was deemed a target for redevelopment and renewal by the City of New Haven. The Trowbridge Square Historical District has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1985 (3).

In 2000, the Yale Urban Design Workshop put forth a redevelopment proposal for Trowbridge Square, citing increasing numbers of vacant lots, abandoned houses and boarded-up commercial spaces (4). Similarly in 2013, the City Planning Department of New Haven made suggestions specifically for the reuse of the Sacred Heart property in an effort for neighborhood revitalization (5). Neither plan seems to have been implemented. The current condition of sidewalks and landscaping in the neighborhood is poor, and the Sacred Heart property is lined with a rusted chain-link fence.