Middle Eastern delicacies will be on the menu this weekend when Our Lady of Lebanon Cathedral, Henry and Remsen Streets, presents its annual Lebanese Food Festival, beginning Friday evening, May 29 and going through Sunday, May 31. Your correspondent and his wife attended this event last year and were delighted by the superb dishes and the value. Proceeds from this year’s fair may be used for needed renovation work on the historic building.
Update: The Brooklyn Paper has a piece on the Festival, with the usual groan-inducing puns, here.
Just an interesting note about this church’s doors which many of you may not know, but will be fascinated to learn. I once read on a maritime website, which I could probably locate if I had the energy and hadn’t consumed two Killian’s Irish Reds tonight, that the doors of this church have a cool history.
They came from a ship hence the nautical theme if you look closely. I believe, and I stress I might have my facts wrong, that the ship caught fire while docked in Manhattan and as firefighters put out the blaze, the ship capsized from the fire hose water.
The ship was later salvaged and the some of the doors wound up on this church.
CJP – The ship was the Normandie. (I’m still not sure if the doors or “just” the medallions are from her. The ship was scuttled some time after the fire.) After the fall of France during WW II, the US took possession of the Normandie while she was docked in NY. I’ve always found the medallions’/doors’ presence on this beautiful cathedral to be one of the oddest (but coolest) things.
There’s more on the Normandie doors, with a photo, at the end of this post.
In old photos, this church had a steeple. I wonder when it was removed?
the normandie keeled over due to the amount of water pumped into her to put out the fire ,clement derrick started the fire by igniting flammable life preservers with his acetelyn torch while the ship was being converted into a troop ship