History of the Parish
Both St. Catherine’s Church and the nearby park were named for Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380). St. Catherine was widely respected for her devotion to the poor and sick and for her incessant zealous labor. The youngest daughter in a large family, she lost many of her brothers and sisters in various plagues and thus gained a great appreciation for life and curing the sick. Eventually this dedication was recognized and she was named patron saint of those who heal the sick. Involved in public affairs, she was instrumental in returning the papacy from Avignon to Rome. She was commonly known for her visions of spiritual encounters with Christ, the most noted being when she saw Christ and herself engage in matrimony.
St. Catherine of Siena Church, founded in 1897, just ten years before the parkland was acquired. The church was originally built to serve the largely Irish community on the Upper East Side. A parochial school was established in 1906 in the basement of the church. A new era for the church came in 1932 when hospitals were built in the neighborhood and the church began to serve patients and staff.
The property for St. Catherine’s Park was purchased by the city of New York in February 1907 for use as a public playground.
The current design is largely modeled after the Florentine floor pattern of Santa Maria sopra Minerva (1280) in Rome, where the body of St. Catherine of Siena rests. The spray shower area stands in for the center aisle, leading to what would be the altar where the flagpole stands. The play areas to each side represent the pews, and the paving pattern throughout the park resembles the actual floor of the church in Rome. The elephant spray shower makes reference to Bernini’s sculpture of an elephant that supports a 6th-century Egyptian obelisk and stands outside the church. Because St. Catherine was often depicted holding a lily, a symbol of new life, lilies have been planted throughout, symbolizing the rejuvenation of the park. St. Catherine’s Park not only has a long history within the neighborhood, but also has religious and art historical associations that live on in the subtle park design.
G. K. Chesterton once wrote, "Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff's edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased."- Orthodoxy Ch. 9