90 Fifth Avenue NYC - Arthur and Countess Annie Leary Cottage - 1890

This a rough sketch of one of the lesser known members of Mrs. Astor’s 400 Society types from the late nineteenth into early twentieth century gilded era New York.

I began, out of curiosity, a search for existing records and images on the Internet for a picture of 90 Fifth Avenue in 1893, the year of death of Arthur Leary, one the extremely few Roman Catholics on “The” Mrs. Astor’s “400” society list. He made the cut not I think by social graces as much as by sheer wealth and having gone to school as a child with “The” Mrs. Astor’s husband, William B Astor Jr..

That personal and probably business as well  connection of Arthur’s was in imitation of the original part of Arthur’s inherited wealth of his father James, who in turn was a business client and associate of William B. Astor Jr’s grandfather, John Jacob Astor, the German born immigrant that founded the American Astor family dynasty line. 

James Leary had been a hatter, using the infamous Astor monopoly controlled beaver pelts, in a shop in the basement of the original luxury hotel “The Astor House” in downtown NYC across from City Hall and before the Civil War.

The three older Leary brothers Arthur, Daniel and George seemed to have made a fortune off of shipping during the Civil War and beyond which ended up being invested soundly in Insurance Companies and Banks by Arthur.

Arthur was unmarried and so his old maid sister Annie Leary usually accompanied him to society balls and to Newport in summer to visit with their peers, the gilded age rich in their million dollar plus “cottages” on the ocean.  After Arthur's death, sister Annie spent the next twenty six years giving much of his estimated anywhere from seven to twenty million dollar fortune away to charity, mostly to Catholic related charities and building projects. 

Anne became “Countess”Annie Leary after the early 1900s who had a Papal title bestowed on her for philanthropy and charity work and most notably towards NYCs Italian immigrant community.

“I began, out of curiosity, a search for existing records and images...” because of the Arthur Leary NYT’s Obit in typical effete NYT’s fashion describing his house at 90 Fifth Ave. as “quaint”. It was no doubt a small simple house not reflective of his immense wealth and social standing as compared to the other urban castles of the rich built further up Fifth Avenue. 

Leary NYT Obit 1893

The Leary’s I suspect were very frugal. From what I have read the house at 90 Fifth Ave may have been rented at one time, waiting for its original owner Dr. Thaddeus Halsted (not Halstead) to die about 1870. He has various addresses in various NYC directories for his doctor’s practice and or residence. I suspect that as a rental property, it did not have many changes or alterations along the time line from when it was built around 1835 as three small houses for the children of William Halsted who had a big mansion built there at the same time at 1 West Fourteenth Street and or “84” Fifth Ave on the lot per city lot maps. The three children’s houses were of course “86”, “88” and “90” Fifth Ave.

Fifth Avenue – Old and New 1824-1924 by HenryCollins Brown (Pages 39 and 40)

  

As the other buildings on the block went commercial with rebuilds, upgrades and add-ons I suspect that the Leary Cottage remained a simple house, probably two rooms on two rooms in a house footprint of 18’8” X 100’ on an 18’8” x 199’ lot per the Bromley 1891 Atlas of the City of New York Lot Map.

Papal Countess Annie Leary of NYC
Photo by Theodore C. Marceau 1859-1922
(original copyright expired)

Countess Annie Leary - Find A Grave 

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Arthur Leary - Find A Grave 

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The Symbolism of the Bas-Relief Sculptures of a Pelican and a Phoenix Over the Entrance Doorways to the Saint Joan of Arc Church Harrowgate Philadelphia

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From childhood I always wondered why there were sculptures of birds and not saints over the doorways of my church in Philly. Nobody seemed to know. Nobody wanted to ask.

Just two doorways as an entrance. One left and one right. The two door configuration seemed to work alright but I always thought not very symmetrical when a bishop came for Confirmation or the May Procession proceeded through one door or the other and not a central third door.

The Priest who founded Saint Joan of Arc seemed to be of very moderate Protestant tastes in that he was born in Wales, educated in London, Canada and Wisconsin before becoming an Episcopalian priest at the turn of the last century.

The Church is a very simple early Romanesque with little adornment or fancy stained glass.  The one rather chic addition to the interior was a dozen mosaics about four foot in circular medallions in between round Roman arches. These Icon style mosaics of the twelve Apostles have backgrounds of gold backed glass mosaic tiles. Impressive if you focus on them but rarely notice them as they are so high up. 

At this point in time I am speculating and going on some historic research and oral tradition that these twelve Apostles Mosaics are recycled from an historic lineage downtown church of St. James once located at 22^nd and Walnut Streets and by the Philadelphia artist Nicola D’Ascencio more famous for this stained glass than his mosaics.

The altar area of Saint Joan’s is also a rather plain sparse area. Even the unmarried Jesus is clean shaven on the Cross there. 

I have also further speculated at this point in time that the altar and altar screen of that defunct Episcopal Church of St. James may have also been on a wish list of Monsignor Edwards Hawks as he built his dream church to cap a career of writing, lecturing and converting to the RC church from the Episcopal early in his career. 

The altar and altar screen of St. James remained in storage until after Msgr. Hawks’s death and was sold to another Episcopal church in the suburbs. Have to wonder if it is one thing to sell iconic mosaics to a Catholic church but maybe the idea of an altar and altar screen was a bit too ecumenical for the times in the middle 1950s.

Back to the doorways. And the decorative bas-reliefs of a Pelican in a nest feeding its young over the left front door and a Phoenix rising from ashes above the right side door.

Having done some cursory research, I see no major issues in dogma regarding RC church design and the use of left and right. There is a distinction in that the left hand side of the church is called the pulpit and or gospel side in terms of the reading of sacred text. The right hand side is referred to the as the lectern and or epistle side of the church and of course refers to the reading of lesser sacred text from that side. 

Also of note, the left side is the pulpit side where the priest reads the gospel aloud and the right hand side is considered more the lay side in that the laity many times read the epistles rather than a priest.

Also from tradition, the bride and groom side of the church is left to right with any reason lost in history. And as a child the children’s mass at 9:00 AM on Sunday morning had the girls side on the left and the boys on the right. 

Secular and or pagan traditions put the left side as the female side and the right side as the masculine side. So too with ancient non-Christian or pre-Christian tradition has the female side associated with the moon and the male side associated with the symbol of the sun.

With all this minor background, I found that the Pelican is a basic Christian symbol of Charity and loosely based on the sacrifice of a parent to feed its young.

Better than that:

Elizabeth I of England adopted the symbol, portraying herself as the "mother of the Church of England". Nicholas Hilliard painted the Pelican Portrait in around 1573, now owned by the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. A pelican feeding her young is depicted in an oval panel at the bottom of the title page of the first (1611) edition of the King James Bible. ~~~ - “Pelican” – Wikipedia

Pelican Detail of Above Portrait

The Phoenix has a long cultural basis going back to ancient times and even before the Greek and Romans to the Egyptians to the Bennu bird as part of Egyptian god mythology and a creature representing rebirth for the dead, a creature that came into its own being at or as part of the first creation scenario and as a symbol of the sun.

In a way the Egyptians worshiped or honored the Bennu bird as a symbol of the everyday sun dying at night and being reborn each morning.

Other cultures have the whys and wherefores of the Phoenix bird in slightly different capacities and in lengths of time in terms of the cycles of a Phoenix’s never ending life. 

The Romans used the Phoenix on their coins to symbolize the supposed indestructibility of their empire.

The Pelican and Phoenix above Saint Joan's doorways are of course framed within a triangle, symbolic of the Christian Trinity and the three fold purpose of one God.

So, in short I believe that Msgr. Hawks put a piece of his life history into the stone of Saint Joan of Arc Church in Harrowgate. 

First with the Pelican as his beginning in the Episcopal church, American offshoot of the Church of England after the American Revolution with England, and second with a Phoenix rising out the ashes of his old life as an Episcopalian priest and his rebirth as a RC priest. 

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Mormon Manti Te'o Forged a Beard Girlfriend – Ultimate White Male Entitlement Feel Good Football Story about Imaginary Girlfriends

Manti Te'o is not white but an honorary white man, a tool of male white entitlement embodied in the manly manly Roman Catholic testosterone corporate culture at Notre Dame FOOTBALL INC.

That and throw in a little bit of standard Mormon forgery sacred tradition…LOL

Rape a real girl or make one up, you’re safe at Notre Dame from reality if you are “white” and male.  Amen.

A White Male Entitled Journalistic Hoax!

http://deadspin.com/5976517/manti-teos-dead-girlfriend-the-most-heartbreaking-and-inspirational-story-of-the-college-football-season-is-a-hoax

There was no Lennay Kekua. Lennay Kekua did not meet Manti Te'o after the Stanford game in 2009. Lennay Kekua did not attend Stanford. Lennay Kekua never visited Manti Te'o in Hawaii. Lennay Kekua was not in a car accident. Lennay Kekua did not talk to Manti Te'o every night on the telephone. She was not diagnosed with cancer, did not spend time in the hospital, did not engage in a lengthy battle with leukemia. She never had a bone marrow transplant. She was not released from the hospital on Sept. 10, nor did Brian Te'o congratulate her for this over the telephone. She did not insist that Manti Te'o play in the Michigan State or Michigan games, and did not request he send white flowers to her funeral. Her favorite color was not white. Her brother, Koa, did not inform Manti Te'o that she was dead. Koa did not exist. Her funeral did not take place in Carson, Calif., and her casket was not closed at 9 a.m. exactly. She was not laid to rest.

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Constantine the Great's Pwned Sarcophagus

If you tier down to my amateur historian level and try to find something available on the net and not yet available from all those ivy weed college libraries and their ancient, in the last century, bound hardcopy research materials, you start to see some really blatant lies and or chasmic sized discrepancies told by both the Catholic church hierarchy and misc. degreed, vested, meal ticket, publish or perish, historians.

Like after Constantine decriminalized Christianity in 313 C.E. with the Edict of Milan, then you have all these stories about his illiterate mom who he hid away through most of his career. Constantine, being born out of wedlock to a Roman soldier and an inn keeper’s daughter, you then have mom running around the empire nearly eighty years of age finding all the one true relics of this or that member of saints’ bodies and or of course the one true cross. 

The Vatican museum has the above pictured sarcophagus listed as Saint Helena’s final resting place.  Reading around and you get all sorts of PR nonsense about how the sculptures on the stone box represent a hunting scene and that it was intended as Constantine’s own Sarcophagus but mom died first and he shoved her into it because in her old age he had not already planned ahead or built the old lady any resting place. Yeah right.

This Sarcophagus pictures war scenes and torture of prisoners on their way to death and or sacrifice at the hands of Constantine’s secret Sun God Mithra/Serapis army cult religion?

The old lady, who goes to Jerusalem for Sonny to find the true cross in a shape that did not exist in Pilate’s time and nails, then orders the destruction of the Temple of Venus over the site of the Holy Sepulchre and then orders, pays for one of the trashiest, slumfest-e-ist looking monuments in the history of western civilization.  Give me a break.

The Muslims never tore this trashfest architecture down. It got burned down when the candles started a fire and the Muslims paid to rebuild it to insure domestic tranquility. 

The propaganda got turned around and we had the First Crusade.  Sweet.

The old lady gets attached to unsubstantiated male created urban legends, myths, PR lies and such like Mary, the mother of Jesus. She gets recruited to near god like sainthood and evangelistic fervor and non-intelligence promoting Sonny’s new Roman Empire religion as the typical go along female doormat misogyny for men’s mischief and “tradition” (lies). Zzzzz.  Anatomy is destiny or is it merely human politics?

RIP Helena.  You can’t choose your parents and you certainly can’t predict the course of the lives of your children or the institutions they found.

Time to Tent the House - Joe the Pope - Exterminate the Vermin

This is a You Tube tape offered worldwide by Al Jazeera news network. That means that over a billion Muslims worldwide are shaking their heads today and glad that they are not being buggered like the Catholics in the shrinking Christian world and especially in Ireland.

What we are witnessing in Ireland is the end of a very sad era where the poor in the name of Christ have been abused and denied their human and civil rights for decades. Official mismanagement, cover up and breaking of established law and procedures has gone on to the point where it is time to call in the home office in Rome, evacuate the building and exterminate the sadness and sin that has been festering in the Roman Church in Ireland.

This is also the result of a collusion between Church and State in that Ireland up until this point has been entwined in an incestuous relationship if not official theocracy.

The Archbishop of Dublin Diarmud Martin is acting in coordination with official secular reports that have their roots in the middle 1990’s that began to document, explain and prosecute this heinous affair of church and state covering up wide scale abuse of children by clergy.

Pope Benedict faces demand to dismiss Irish bishops in child abuse scandal

An influential international Catholic organisation has written to Pope Benedict XVI calling on him to remove Irish bishops named as part of the cover-up of clerical child abuse in Dublin. The Voice of the Faithful has also challenged the pope to order an Ireland-wide inquiry covering every diocese to examine further cases of priests abusing children…

Last week's report, carried out by Irish judge Yvonne Murphy, identified four former archbishops of Dublin as failing to report their knowledge about child sex abuse to the Garda. The Vatican and the papal nuncio in Dublin were both singled out for criticism in the Murphy report, accused of ignoring requests from the judge and her commission for information about abuse in the Dublin diocese.

The Voice of the Faithful letter tells the pope that "repeating the tragedy of Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Ferns, Cloyne, Sydney and so many other dioceses worldwide, four archbishops of Ireland's most populous diocese have behaved in a manner that facilitated the deepest psychological, emotional and spiritual trauma to many children.

I am in a quandary. I do not see this story on the highlight news items of various Internet services. Is there genuine lack of interest in this “European” story here in America? Perhaps the MSM and Papal Knight Rupert Murdock have suppressed it? Out of sight, out of mind. Or is religion in today’s America obsolete and totally irrelevant to the young, modern and fully secular world.

Perhaps the New York Times has printed an article. I have not checked. I think that the NYT will be very careful what it prints now that Bishop Dolan has officially labeled the New York Times as “anti-catholic”. Is it really a fact that the RC church in America is a paper tiger, nothing more a Public Relations paper handout and living only in delusions of past glory?

In any case, although no longer a Roman Catholic, this Cultural Christian is ashamed today to say that his ancestors came from Ireland.

I suggest that at the next Saint Patrick’s Day Parade - March 17, 2010 – that Archbishop Tim Dolan drape the cathedral doors in black in honor of all the thousands of abused children in Ireland at the hands of clergy and state.