Our Lady of Presentation School/The Presentation School Foundation Community Center

640 Washington Street, Brighton

Eighth-grade graduating class, 1950, Our Lady of the Presentation School. Source: Joseph P. Healey Library, University of Massachusetts Boston, via Digital Commonwealth.

Graduation ceremonies for Our Lady of Presentation School normally took place inside the Catholic elementary school. On June 9, 2005, however, the one for the kindergarten was held across the street in Brighton’s Oak Square Common. The ceremony was one of both celebration and protest—protest against the Archdiocese of Boston’s abrupt closure of the school the previous day. The Archdiocese had made the move out of fear that parents would occupy the building in order to prevent the shutting down of the school, scheduled for two days later.

The early 2000s was a challenging time for the Catholic Church in Boston.  Growing out-migration of Catholics of European descent to Boston’s suburbs and broader changes in churchgoing among Catholics (decades-long processes) brought about a dramatic decline in church attendance within the city. These factors, combined with the revelations of sexual abuse in 2002, led to a sharp decrease in financial support for the Church from area Catholics. Meanwhile, the sexual abuse scandal itself exacted high financial costs: About two years after the revelations, the Archdiocese of Boston had paid $85 million in a settlement involving 500 victims.* In this context, the Archdiocese announced in mid-2004 that it would close 82 parishes (out of a total of 357) in the coming months. It also announced the closure of Our Lady of Presentation School.

Given the strong identification of Boston’s Catholics with their parishes and the associated institutions, parishioners often resisted the closures, and, in some instances, successfully. In the case of Our Lady of Presentation, parents, students and community members occupied and camped out in Oak Square in protest of the lockout, attracting national and international media attention and strong support across Boston in the process. Eventually, in 2006, the Archdiocese agreed to sell the property to the Presentation School Foundation, an organization of parents and community members.

Today, the former school is the home of the multi-service Presentation School Foundation Community Center, which opened in 2012. It houses a range of non-profit organizations that serve children, families, and recent immigrants.

The Presentation School Foundation Community Center, undated. Source: The Presentation School Foundation Community Center website.

Getting there:

Various MBTA bus lines pass through Oak Square.

To learn more:

“A Community Center Rises from A Closed Catholic School,” WBUR, May 18, 2012.

Brian MacQuarrie, “Once Embattled Brighton School Reborn as Community Center,” The Boston Globe, May 11, 2012.

Michael Paulson, “Catholic School Lockout Angers Parents, Officials,” The Boston Globe, June 10, 2005.

John C. Seitz, No Closure: Catholic Practice and Boston’s Parish Shutdowns, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011.

“History,” Presentation School Foundation Community Center website.

* See also the entry on the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in A People’s Guide to Greater Boston.

Cardinal’s Residence/McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College

2101 Commonwealth Avenue, Brighton

During the 1920s, the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, under the leadership of Cardinal William Henry O’Connell, a man known for his highly elitist ways, moved its seat of power from the South End to a semi-suburban area of Brighton. Following Boston College’s relocation to Chestnut Hill—an affluent “village” comprised of parts of Boston, Brookline, and Newton—O’Connell set up shop at the intersection of Lake Street and Commonwealth Avenue, across from the BC campus, on the land of St. John’s Seminary.*

Cardinal O’Connell and Governor Cox at Charlestown Navy Yard, circa 1920-1929. Photo by Leslie Jones. Source: Leslie Jones Collection, Arts Department, Boston Public Library, via Digital Commonwealth.

The cardinal’s residence, a three-story, ornate and opulent Italian Renaissance-style palazzo—one financed to a large degree from a bequest from the family of Benjamin F. Keith, a vaudeville magnate—was the centerpiece of the Archdiocese’s “Little Rome.” According to David Quigley, a historian at Boston College, the residence was “a visible symbol of the imperial archdiocese in the early 20th century, and then, during the very difficult years in 2002 and 2003 [referring to the revelations of sexual abuse by members of the clergy], it was a site of daily protest and picketing.”

In 2004, the Archdiocese, in dire need of funds to pay restitution to the victims of the sexual abuse, agreed to sell to Boston College 43 acres of land and numerous buildings, including the cardinal’s residence, for $99.4 million. Three years later, it sold another 20 acres and three additional buildings, one of which was the chancery, the headquarters of the Archdiocese (today the home of Boston College’s alumni center), for $65 million.

The current cardinal lives in a modest rectory attached to the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in the South End.* Meanwhile, the offices of the Archdiocese are now located in Braintree, a South Shore town that has one of the Boston area’s greatest concentrations of residents of Irish descent. The move mimics the migration of many “old” Boston Catholics (those of Irish and Italian descent) to the suburbs. It also reflects a marked decrease in the Church’s political influence in the City of Boston in recent decades. As for the former home of all the Archdiocese of Boston’s cardinals in the 20th century, it is today Boston College’s McMullen Museum of Art.

McMullen Museum of Art, former cardinal’s residence of the Archdiocese of Boston, June 2017. Photo by Joseph Nevins.

Getting there:

Green Line, B Branch, to Boston College station.

To learn more:

Thomas H. O’Connor, Boston Catholics: A History of the Church and Its People, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998.

Michael Paulson, “Seat of Boston’s Catholic Power Gives Way to Other Pursuits,” The New York Times, January 2, 2015.

Christine Williams, “Archdiocese Sells Brighton Campus to BC,” TheBostonPilot.com, May 24, 2007.

*There are entries on St. John’s Seminary and the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in A People’s Guide to Greater Boston.