St. Joseph's Church & the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet

Introduction[edit]

St. Joseph's Church is a Roman Catholic Church in Troy, NY. It is located on Jackson Street between Third and Fourth Streets in the area of South Troy and is part of the Diocese of Albany [1].

History[edit]

As the Irish fled Ireland during the potato famine in the 1840s they began to settle near the iron mills of South Troy. In need of a place to worship, Rev. Peter Havermans who was the pastor of St. Mary's Church hired architect David Hathaweway to design the church. It was completed in 1854 and became known as the "Ironworkers Church" [1].

The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, CSJ, are a congregation of women religious that were founded in Le Puy-en-Velay, France in 1650. In 1834 some of the Sisters were sent to St. Louis, Missouri [4]. As the congregation grew, a few of the sisters were requested to help teach the youth of local immigrants in Troy and were sent to St. Joseph's in 1858 where they taught at the parish school which later became St. Joseph's Academy, built in 1876. The school had a high school until Catholic Central High School was opened in 1924.

St. Joseph's Seminary[edit]

St. Joseph's Provincial Seminary was opened in 1864 in the previous Troy University building. The seminary trained many priests until it closed in the 1890s. The Sisters of St. Joseph then purchased the property in 1908, establishing a Provincial House in 1912, still referring to it as St. Joseph's Seminary. A Chapel was constructed for the Sisters in 1933, adjoining the main Seminary Building [6].

From Chapel to VCC[edit]

The property of St. Joseph's Seminary, including the Chapel, were purchased by Rensselaer in 1958. The four-story building was renamed the University Building and the first two floors were used by department's of RPI while the upper floors were unoccupied due to structural instability concerns. The Chapel was renovated to house the library in 1960. The University Building was then demolished in 1969 and the Folsom Library took its place upon its completion in 1976 [6]. Since the Chapel was then empty, its was transformed into the Alan M. Voorhees Computing Center, the VCC at RPI, by architects Wallace, Floyd, Ellenzweig, Moore, Inc. in 1979 [2].

Present Day[edit]

The Sisters' convent occupied an old maternity hospital on Fourth Street until 1963 when they moved to new Provincial House in Latham, NY where it remains today [1]. The Albany Province is made up of the houses in both the Dioceses of Albany and Syracuse. The Albany Province of Sisters also founded and sponsored the college of St. Rose in Albany in 1920. Which is named after St. Rose of Lima who was the first canonized saint in the Americas. The congregation is now composed of around twelve-hundred vowed Sisters who minister in four provinces across the US and in Peru. The Congregational Center remains in St. Louis [4].

The parish of St. Joseph's Church is still alive and well with weekly and weekend mass times in English, Latin, and Spanish. It is now served by the Order of the Carmelites [5].