St. Jean Baptiste Catholic Church, also known as the Église St-Jean-Baptiste, is a Roman Catholic parish church in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, located at 76th Street at Lexington Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1882 to serve the area's French Canadian immigrant population and remained the French-Canadian National Parish until 1957. It has been staffed by the Fathers of the Blessed Sacrament since 1900.
Financier Thomas Fortune Ryan, a Catholic convert in his teens, bankrolled its construction. The Italian architect practicing in New York Nicholas Serracino, who combined elements of the Italian Renaissance Revival and Classical Revival architectural styles, won first prize for the design at the Esposizione Internazionale delle Industrie e del Lavore in Turin, in 1911. It is his only surviving church in the city.
It is one of the few Catholic churches in New York City with a dome, and only one of two — the other being St. Patrick's Cathedral — with stained glass windows from the glass studios of Chartres. The building was designated a city landmark in 1969. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 along with its rectory. In the late 20th century the interior and exterior were both restored.
Started in 1882 in a rented hall above a stable, the congregation has been through three buildings at two locations. St. Jean Baptiste High School was started on the grounds as an elementary school by nuns of the Congregation of Notre Dame in 1886. In the late 19th century an exposure by a visiting priest of a relic of St. Anne intended for one night, grew into a three-week event during which many miracle cures were alleged by thousands of pilgrims who crowded the church; as a result the church now has its own shrine to the saint, which led to a failed effort to get it designated a basilica. In 1900 it passed from the control of the founding Fathers of Mercy to the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, who introduced Eucharistic adoration as a worship style.
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