Jesuit Parish Built Upon The Location Of A Former Protestant Church

St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church

The first Jesuit-founded St. Francis Xavier Church was on Elizabeth Street and the Bowery, purchased from a Protestant congregation. After it burned down, lots were purchased on W. 16th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues but the new church, built in 185l, proved too small for the growing number of the faithful. It was gutted in 1889; the rebuilt structure now houses a Jesuit residence on an upper floor and the parish’s boys’ high school — which counts among its Xavier-educated alumni major CEOs, top Fortune 500 executives, TV newscaster Al Roker and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

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