#st-pauls-episcopal-church

#st-pauls-episcopal-church

The Catholic Church of Saint Mary at 440 Grand St. on the Lower East Side was built in 1833 with a Romanesque Revival facade designed by prolific architect Patrick Charles Keeley in 1864. Keeley, the church's architect, designed nearly 600 churches during his career, but this would mark the first of his works to be landmarked in New York City.

When you think about the goings-on inside an average church, you might envision a sermon, a reading from the Bible or a song or two. Something that's less expected would be, for instance, a guided group meditation - and yet meditation has been showing up in a growing number of religious contexts where you might not expect it. That, at least, is one of the big takeaways from a recent Associated Press investigation by Luis Andres Henao and Deepa Bharath.

Yet amid the loss, in the year since the devastation, the community has not faltered. In temporary spaces - the auditorium of a Catholic high school, a nearby Methodist church, a backyard - members have continued to gather regularly for prayer and celebration. Laurence Harris, a longtime member and wife of the temple's cantor, Ruth, who both helped save saved multiple Torahs from burning last year, said that the community has grown in the year since.