109 years ago, The Bowery Mission opened its “Cathedral for the Homeless”

 

This is the 109th Anniversary of The Chapel at The Bowery Mission. And this year the mission is discontinuing the tradition of opening the chapel’s benches and its cafeteria for emergency sleep off the streets on really cold nights. In city government parlance, this option was called “Code Blue” shelter, the times when the wind-chilled temperature drops to 32 degrees or lower.

Last year, the mission threw open its chapel doors on these nights, sheltering hundreds of homeless men from freezing to death. The chapel and cafeteria could accommodate in a pinch about 150 men. Now, it will refer the refugees to city-operated emergency shelters and other partners of The Bowery Mission. The policy was changed for this winter in November. The mission will continue to offer emergency beds, rehabilitation, and other aid to homeless at seven facilities around the city, including the one on the Bowery. 

The ministry to the homeless made a decision a few years ago to decentralize some of its services as a way of strengthening neighborhood networks to support the homeless. In the past, the Lower East Side was a concentration of high poverty, so The Bowery Mission and other homeless ministries started where the poor were at. But now most homeless in the city actually come from the poorest neighborhoods in upper Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. As it has widened its geographic footprint, the mission has absorbed other ministries like the NYC Rescue Mission in Tribeca and the Goodwill Rescue Mission in Newark, New Jersey.

Yet, the mission and its chapel on the Bowery still represent the historic symbolic heart of New Yorkers’ compassion. Any changes to its operations is heart-stopping. We prepared a coffee table booklet celebrating the Chapel and share it with you at this moment of reflection on the changes.

The Bowery Mission actually offers more services than it has ever done and is now raising support to host an Easter dinner and winter services for the homeless. If you cant to support this effort, you click here.

 

(For best reading “The Chapel,” hold your mobile phone screen sidewise.)

 

 

 

 

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