Jan Hus Presbyterian Church and Neighborhood House

Though the congregation was established in 1895, the golden yellow building, designed in the Hungarian vernacular architectural style by Emery Roth, was not completed until 1916. The church is now the oldest in the neighborhood and still holds services in Hungarian every Sunday.

Holy Trinity Cathedral, a Greek Orthodox church in the Byzantine Moderne style, is the national cathedral of the Orthodox Archdiocese of America. Though first formed in 1891, Eleanor Roosevelt laid the cornerstone of the current building in 1932.

When I met Reverend Donald Baker at the end of 2015, he had been the pastor at St. Monica's for only four months. He already, however, had formed a deep sense of adoration for the church and its community, especially its emphasis on family and education. It was clear that he wasted no time delving into life at the church, since he met me having just come from coaching the new altar servers and was about to celebrate the mass for World AIDS day directly after our interview. Father Baker is pleased to be affiliated with a church that is connected to an education center. St. Stephen of Hungary school was merged with St. Monica’s after St. Monica’s merged with the Saint Stephen of Hungary parish and the Church of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. Many of the families that attend St. Monica's are asking how they can apply to St. Stephen's – "The school is really bursting at the seams, " Father Baker proudly told me. Though the relationship with St. Stephen of Hungary School is new, St. Monica's is used to having a school under its wing. Between 1881 and 1974, there was a school attached to St. Monica's. Shortly after it closed, the Caedmon School, a private elementary school, took up residence in the empty school building and has been there ever since. Although non denominational, Caedmon’s founders were Catholic and thus Caedmon offers Catholic religious education to any parents requesting it. St. Monica’s aids in that. Built in June of 1879, the church has stayed in the same neighborhood since its inception. The original building stood at 404 East 78th Street, but in 1906, a new church was built at the current site. "This was the Irish church, " Father Baker explained. The religious community was divided along cultural and linguistic lines. For example, St. Elizabeth was the Hungarian church and St. Joseph was the German church. Reverend Baker informed me that the older generation at St. Monica's is still primarily Irish. Having spent twelve years on the Lower East Side, first at St. Teresa's on Henry Street and then for seven of those years at the Church of the Nativity, the Upper East Side is proving to be a new experience for Father Baker. Downtown was very multicultural: Daily masses were said in Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, and English. Reverend Baker had to be able to function in Spanish as a priest. "That was a real challenge, but I loved it, " he said. He also joked that the demographic in the neighborhood was very different: "If I went to a restaurant, I was the oldest guy there. Up here, it's all families. " Often referred to as "Pizza Mass, " a special family service is held on the first Saturday of the month, allowing young children who cannot always sit quietly to attend with their parents. Afterwards, everyone is invited to have pizza. Father Baker led me through the rectory, pointing out, "This is where we live: it's a short commute, " and on into the main sanctuary. A statue of St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine, stood at the altar. The first thing that caught my eye was the enormous organ. Music is a large part of the community and Father Baker mentioned that people are constantly singing. Since it was December, he was anticipating that it would be standing room only for the Christmas mass, with over six hundred people in attendance. "'Catholic' means 'Universal, ' and I take that very seriously, " he told me before I left, and then added warmly, "Everyone is welcome – you already have a home here. "

I thought that perhaps I was immune to the glorious interiors of New York City churches after exploring seventy-five streets, but St. Jean Baptiste Catholic Church proved me wrong. The sanctuary is absolutely exquisite, with shimmering stained glass, towering columns, and majestic balconies. I met with Barbara O’Dwyer Lopez, the President of the Parish Council, and Father John Kamas who together wrote a beautiful book about the history of St. Jean, making them the perfect people from whom to receive a tour of the building. St. Jean Baptiste has been serving the community for a long time. The church has existed since 1882, though it moved from just down the street to its current corner location in 1912. Barbara pointed at the stained glass, mentioning that it came from pre-World War I France. She also informed me that the church and school are still associated with the same sisterhood of nuns, the Congregation of Notre Dame, as they were at the start. “Teeming with history, this place, ” she said with a smile. Numerous choirs are associated with the church. “Music has always been a very fine tradition with us, ” Barbara explained before listing the parish choir, children’s choir, and professional singers whose voices have echoed off the church’s walls. Orchestras come from all around to perform in St. Jean’s impressive sanctuary and, of course, the choir from the St. Jean Baptiste High School also calls the church home. I inquired about the congregation and discovered that it has been steadily growing in recent years. St. Jean is emphasizing more attendance with children, as the neighborhood has become populated with young families. Many members of the congregation come from the busy hospital communities nearby where the church also sends chaplains. In addition to the constant flow of people who stop in to pray in the main sanctuary, Barbara mentioned that the church grounds are always buzzing with activity. “We have a very busy campus here, ” Barbara said, and led me through the church to another part of the building. The girls’ school was our next stop. Like the church, it is over one hundred years old. Barbara informed me that the students come from each of the five boroughs, with many from ethnic minorities. Barbara was proud to tell me that there is a 100% college acceptance rate at graduation. Via the large auditorium, Barbara took me through the school courtyard to show me the theater whereupon I was introduced to Tony, the manager of the community center. In the same complex as the theater, there is a dance studio where different groups, from adult ballroom dancing to children’s hiphop, rehearse. We also passed a meeting room occupied by a toddler playgroup and saw signs for Applause, an educational Broadway music program based at St. Jean’s. I continued to be impressed by the diversity of groups that were welcomed into St. Jean’s facilities, how each space appeared to be used to its full potential, and the lovely people involved throughout. As Barbara added jovially, “There’s hardly an empty minute! ”The theater itself is no exception – The Hewitt School rents out the theater, as well as small theater groups like the Blue Hill Troupe, which produces a lot of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. While observing the Hewitt girls rehearsing the production of Le Malade Imaginaire by Moliere, Barbara directed my gaze to the floor that opens up to reveal an orchestra pit. Not only does the church provide a wonderful resource to performance groups around the city, but the revenue from the theater helps support the church’s upkeep and other activities. It is a beautifully symbiotic relationship: “The theater provides stability for the church. ”When we returned to the church proper, I had the pleasure of meeting Father Kamas. In his warm, gentle manner he spoke of how his relationship with the church goes back many years. He once attended the grammar school that was affiliated with St. Jean Baptiste, and the nun who used to be his eighth grade teacher now lives in the rectory with him. “I feel very at home here, ” he emphasized. The church has changed since he was young, but for the better. “When I was a kid, it was very dark, ” John said, but then the church underwent a twelve year renovation beginning in 1988. During this time the interior was redone and the roof was patched. The church is, unsurprisingly, a landmark building; therefore, everything had to be replaced using the same materials. It was then that the theater and community center were built.

Like many surgeons, when Dr. Thomas Romo III graduated medical school, he hopped on a plane to India and Vietnam in order to fix cleft lips. "We felt like we had time and a reason to give back, " he said of himself and his peers who choose to travel the world doing medical procedures before settling down and developing a practice. Though Dr. Romo operated on numerous lips, he realized after a while that the program he was traveling with was only fixing a quarter of the problem. After the lip healed, the palate still did not close correctly and teeth did not grow straight. Patients would experience chronic Eustachian tube problems, resulting in earaches. Dr. Romo wanted to fix the rest of the palate, but the mission that he was with focused solely on lips. "I wanted to change the paradigm, " Dr. Romo declared. Back in New York, he began developing a plan to help children with facial birth defects through all operation stages, not just cosmetic. Dr. Romo admitted that he did not have any experience putting together a foundation, "I did not go to business school, " he pointed out, and therefore it was challenging for him to lay the groundwork of his new venture. He decided to accept only newborns through age twenty-one who were on Medicaid or required other financial assistance, with emphasis on those from the United States. As he phrased it, "Little Baby Face Foundation helps "children from Harlem to Ethiopia. "With his mission in place, Dr. Romo then recruited thirty doctors, including pediatricians, plastic surgeons, and various specialists. This impressive brain trust assembles each month to discuss fifteen to twenty children whose financial statements have been checked. They ask, "Who does this child need to see? " If they are not sure, they bring them in for a "look-see" with each of the doctors. He then went on to say that when these children come in to meet this large group of doctors, they are experiencing something unique - this number of medical professionals is rarely seen in one room. For the entire stay, including during the operation and recovery time, the child and his or her family are taken care of every step of the way: their flights are paid for, "Mario picks them up in a car service, " and they are welcomed with open arms at the Ronald McDonald House. What most impressed me about the Little Baby Face Foundation is that every doctor volunteers his or her time. It has been worked out so that no one needs to perform more than a handful of procedures each month. Occasionally, when Dr. Romo is met with slight reluctance from one of the doctors, he often responds with a poignant, yet witty response: "How much fat do you want to suck and how many boobs do you want to do? Or do you want to change a child's life? "Dr. Romo performs a significant number of the operations. He sometimes ends up doing as many as ten during the winter holidays. Speaking with him is an enlightening experience, as he is so full of energy, compassion, and joviality. He shared a few stories of patients who had touched his heart. He told me about operations that involved a Texan child with nerve paralysis and another from Harlem who was born deaf and missing an ear on one side. On the latter, Dr. Romo performed a cochlear implant and that the child "heard his name said at graduation. "Speaking about a few other patients from abroad, Dr. Romo continued to touch my own heart as he spoke of a child who came from farther afield - in Ethiopia. The girl had a large mass on her neck that no other doctor would touch. Dr. Romo said, "We had to fly her from a small village to Addis Ababa to Dubai to New York. " Not only did the girl have the mass removed, but she also got to have a New York adventure. As he continued on, I learned about a couple from England who came with their eighteen-month old son, who had a tumor falling over his eye. The parents, who were only nineteen and twenty-one, themselves, were given the opportunity to spend several weeks in Manhattan while their child was having his life changed. Dr. Romo is proud of how far the foundation has come since it began in 1990. He recently experienced a year in which he raised enough money in order to pay a small staff. One of the members of his team is his own wife, Diane Romo, who is the surgical coordinator. She deals directly with the children and has the extreme pleasure of contacting families to tell them, "We're going to bring you to New York. "Now that he has a model and a brand, Dr. Romo hopes to expand. "We can helicopter to Chicago, LA, or San Francisco, " he told me excitedly. But he is also devoted to New York, and emphasizes the concept of "New Yorkers helping New Yorkers. " He wishes that more people knew that the Little Baby Face Foundation existed. He said that a lot of hospitals are in the red, which should not be the case, since there are so many doctors willing to occasionally work for free for the sake of the greater good. His need to give to the community in any way he can is inspiring. As he perfectly phrased it for me, "I'm a surgeon. This is the only way I know how to give back. "

Holy Trinity Cathedral, a Greek Orthodox church in the Byzantine Moderne style, is the national cathedral of the Orthodox Archdiocese of America. Though first formed in 1891, Eleanor Roosevelt laid the cornerstone of the current building in 1932.

In 1832, the Reverend Dr. McVickar found a large group of "destitute" boys playing on Stanton Street. He asked them why they were not at church, and they replied that there was no church. He immediately started raising money to start one. He managed to find a place to worship in a tiny room over an engine house. The first assembly occurred on January 6th, 1833, on the Festival of the Epiphany, hence the church's name. Since then, it has had many homes throughout the city and merged with a few other congregations before finding its current location on 74th Street. The parish moved in 1944, over a hundred years after it was first formed. At the time, the "Far East Side" had no Episcopal churches, but Epiphany chose to move in order to meet the needs of the New York Hospital complex.

Coach Jellybean, a man who was only introduced to us by his universally-used nickname, has endless good humor. He told us, "I am world famous on the Upper West Side among kids aged nine to twelve. " He added with a cheeky smile, "I'm a big deal. " He is often spotted on the street or at the zoo by gaping mouthed kids who are shocked to see their coach outside his natural habitat. It is not surprising that he is recognized so frequently, since two to three hundred kids go through the batting cages each week. It is, after all, the only place in Manhattan with an indoor facility. Jellybean took us past the large bank vaults that are a permanent part of the Apple Bank basement and into the Green and Blue rooms chatting enthusiastically. The Center can host six different classes at the same time, thanks to its size and equipment. It has every kind of pitching mechanism one can imagine, from a big ancient beast that is still "one of the best machines in the business" despite its age, to an LED display that lights up to resemble an actual pitcher. There are even simulators that can show where the ball would end up going in Yankee Stadium (with handicaps for younger batters). Not only does it motivate kids with a little firework display for home runs, but it also serves as a helpful statistical tool for older players hoping to improve their technique. One of the most impressive machines was the "pro-hitter" which can shoot out balls at 100mph and can basically mimic any kind of major league pitch. Jellybean also showed us the party room, which was decorated on one side for the Mets and on the other for the Yankees, in an effort to appeal to fans of both teams. As I was admiring the countless photographs of kids that lined the hallways, Jellybean pointed out that the center is not just for children. Far from it: the facilities have been used for bachelor parties, special needs adults, and even "big league guys" who want a place to practice in between seasons. The Center is also popular among foreign tour groups who want to try out America's pastime while visiting New York. Jellybean was particularly proud of the charity events that the Center hosts, where people pledge money for hitting pitches at a certain speed. After our tour, I took the time to speak with Jason, who told me more about the programs that the Center offers. There are tournament teams, after school programs, summer camps, and birthday parties, weekly classes, and, during the warmer months, outdoor leagues. He explained that the space's main purpose is to "Promote the experience of baseball. " When I asked how the Baseball Center accomplishes its mission, he replied without hesitating: "the coaches. " Some of the coaches played in college, some are former professionals, and some are still playing, but what binds them all together is their love of the game and their ability as teachers. "A good player doesn't always make a good coach, " Jason admitted, and assured me that each of his coaches is thoroughly trained as a teacher. With a grin, he told me that a mother had recently said to him, "I don't think I've ever seen so many men who are good with children. " With pride, Jason pointed out the sign that marked the Baseball Center as a designated New York City "safe house. "Though Jason has seen some real baseball stars come through the Center's programs - including Clayton Kershaw of the LA Dodgers - he was pleased to tell me of a child who had been coming for years, and had recently been offered a full ride to Stanford via baseball. He went on to say that he enjoys seeing every child thrive, no matter what level they ultimately achieve. He told me that his favorite part about working at the Baseball Center are those happy moments when he witnesses a child get their very first hit. "It's magic, " he gushed. It is a personal victory not just for the child, but for everyone at the Center. "We are a part of each child's team. "