From girls’ convent school to transitional housing, the story of a Gothic castle on Riverside Drive
There’s a stone fortress with a battlement-like central tower and a double staircase entrance at the corner of Riverside Drive and 140th Street.
As striking as this fortified castle is when you encounter it from the sidewalk, viewing it from the West Side Highway helps you truly absorb its out-of-place Medieval feel.
Five stories high with stone turrets, a gabled roof, dormers, crenellations, and Gothic windows and finials, it’s unlike any of the surrounding buildings in this corner of West Harlem—a quiet neighborhood of tenements and high rises fronting Riverside Park.
Such a conglomeration of rough-cut stone walls and tidy limestone trim must have an interesting backstory. Who built this showstopper—and what purpose does it serve today?
Dial back to the early 20th century, when Riverside Drive was extended past 140th Street. New housing was being built in proximity to the park, but the Drive was also historically home to institutions, asylums, and reformatories that needed open space and excess land.
Enter a Roman Catholic order that wanted to build a new convent school. The sisters of St. Walburga’s Academy had established their first school for girls on the West Side, possibly on Riverside Drive and 104th Street. The school was a simple Italianate Victorian structure with a convent complete with a rooftop widow’s walk next door (photo above).
The sisters needed a bigger building. In 1911 they chose architect John W. Kearney for the task. The inspiration for Kearney’s design isn’t clear, but the origin of the construction material appears to be known.
“The schist rock for constructing St. Walburga’s Academy on Riverside Drive came from excavation of tunnels for the city’s first subway line, the Interborough Rapid Transit subway,” states history and culture website Clio.com.
Completed in 1913, the new St. Walburga’s Academy—in a more spaced-out West Harlem—operated as a day and boarding school for girls. “The Roman Catholic sisters at St. Walburga’s Academy taught 50 girls in four grades in 1915, according to the National Catholic Education Association,” wrote Clio.com.
I wish I had some insight into what happened to some of St. Walburga’s graduates over the five or so decades it occupied this site. Looking through newspaper archives, I did find lots of wedding announcements, some for graduates who went on to Barnard and other women’s colleges.
In 1957, St. Walburga’s moved out of the Gothic castle and took up residence in the Westchester town of Rye. The school renamed itself School of the Holy Child, according to a New York Times article from 2000, and continues to operate today.
After St. Walburga’s left, the Gothic castle became home to a Yeshiva, per Clio.com, then sat empty into the 1990s until a different kind of institution appeared and gave the building renewed purpose.
In 1998, the Fortune Society—a residential re-entry center for formerly incarcerated individuals—took over the space and remade it to serve ex-offenders who need transitional housing, counseling, job opportunities, and other services to help restart their lives.
It’s a fitting occupant for a storied building. The Society renovated what was a crumbling relic and seems to have added to the original building, as seen on the 140th Street side. Scaffolding around the first floor also reveals more renovation is in the works.
It’s not quite a girls’ convent school. But like St. Walburga’s Academy, the Fortune Society has a mission to educate and influence lives.
Curious about many of the other mansions, townhouses, and institutional buildings that remain on Riverside Drive? Join Ephemeral New York on a Riverside Drive walking tour! Space is still available for the next tour on Sunday, April 6 at 1 p.m. Click here for more info and to sign up!
[Third image: Cornelia Connelly Library; fifth image: NYPL Digital Collection]
