Ep. 12: There's a nunnery atop that hill

Sister Henryka Bernat entered the convent of 

the Contemplative Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Peekskill in 1954. 

She worked for the Sister’s Altar Bread Co., which baked close to 1 billion 

communion wafers over 90 years, before closing in 1996.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Adjacent to Peekskill station resides Mount St. Francis, home of the Franciscan Sisters.  There are two big signs at the bottom of the hill that inform those enticed to explore that this is "Private Property."

Directly behind their elegant home are the Riverbend condos that were built about a decade ago. They are representative of the kind of change that has occurred over the last ten years in Peekskill.

Today, instead of vast parcels of land once occupied by sanctuaries and retreats once owned by religious orders like the Episcopal Sisters of St. Mary, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd and the Missionary Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis there are wide swaths of cookie-cutter condominiums with names like Society Hill, Chapel Hill, and Riverbend. 

According to amateur historian Rob Yasinsac who writes in his site Hudson Valley Ruins:

In the late 19th-century, several religious orders established retreats, convents and reformatory schools overlooking the Hudson River in Peekskill. For over 100 years, these groups cared for and educated [tens of] thousands of dependent young people, mainly from urban areas. In the 1970s, these groups began removing their operations from the suburbs back to New York City. In the 1980s, these properties remained much as they had been for a century, in a state of semi-abandonment.

Just south of the Peekskill train station, the Missionary Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis owned 28 acres. Just as Westchester's real estate market really began entering the stratosphere, developers turned their eyes to formerly shunned locales, acquiring property on the cheap since it could be developed and sold at exponentially higher rates within a year or two.

Ginsburg Development Corporation (GDC) is one of the larger players reshaping the Hudson riverfront in the early 2000s, here in Peekskill and also Tarrytown, Yonkers, Haverstraw and Poughkeepsie. In 2003, the Franciscan Sisters sold approximately 21 acres to GDC, which then built the Riverbend condominiums. A small number of institutional buildings were demolished, but also lost was this serene walk among the "Stations of the Cross" (also known as the "Way of the Cross.")

As Rob points out places like Peekskill are rich with history and it is vital that we preserve them, if only through the stories of that and those which and who have inhabited our hometowns.

Much as we did a little over a month ago, it is too easy to assume ownership and ignore the spirits which have worked and toiled and slept and wept before you, ultimately paving the way for you to make a place like Peekskill your new hometown.

Via The Peekskill Commuter, I’m honoring the paths they’ve paved, by sharing some of the history I’m discovering as we settle in.

An excellent, fascinating and in-depth review of the development that has occurred over the last decade can be read in Peekskill religious estates rich grounds for development boom by Brian J. Howard (The Journal News, November 7, 2005).

Amateur historian Rob Yasinsac 

documents the history and fate of 

the ruins of Hudson Valley.