The Great Fire of '74
by: Tina Morales & Curtis Rist
In the early hours of a freezing February
morning in 1974, a flash of sparks from electrical wires turned a 117
year old church into an inferno. Within minutes, the wood frame
building, including a rectangular bell tower that had become a landmark
on the Rockaway peninsula, was destroyed.
As the blaze weakened the oak timbers in the tower, a three ton bronze
bell, which only hours earlier had tolled to call parishioners to
evening Mass, crashed through the floor of the church and landed in the
basement. The bell, which had been a gift to the congregation in the
1890s, was cracked beyond repair.
Firefighters from throughout the peninsula raced to the burning church,
which had been thoroughly renovated only one year earlier. Although
their efforts to save the building failed, their spirit in uniting for
the parish continued.
Even before the ashes of the old St. Mary's Star of the Sea Church were
cold, a new Roman Catholic Church was in the planning. This one, a
modern brick building on the corner of New Haven Avenue and B. 20th
Street in Far Rockaway, rose with the support of it's congregation as
well as congregations across the peninsula; Jewish, Catholic and
Protestant.
Donations to the church building fund grew steadily, and from a huge
number of sources. Proceeds from a local synagogue's bingo games were
directed to the new building, and a local Presbyterian church raised
$1,700 from a garage sale. The owner of two nursing homes on the
peninsula, a man who was Jewish, held a benefit for the church. And from
schoolchildren, nickel-and-dime donations provided the mortar with which
to cement the larger gifts, for a total of $625,000.
"The parish withstood the ravages of the Great Depression of the
thirties and the coming of the automobile and railroad, which turned Far
Rockaway into a year-round community," said the Rev. James McKenna, then
pastor of the church. With the community firmly behind it, the parish -
the third oldest in the Diocese of Brooklyn - survived the fire.
The cracked bronze bell that lay in disrepair in the charred basement
was hoisted aloft and placed inside the church above the tabernacle in
1982, when the new sanctuary was dedicated. This coincided with the
building's dedication, and with the parish's 125th anniversary.
Although the bell will never toll again, it is there to symbolize the
community's support of the parish, and to offer a historical connection
to the days when the Rockaways were populated by farmers and fishermen.
