"THE STAGE LEAVES the Plaza at 10 o'clock for the church." So said the announcement in the Daily Alta on St. Valentine's Day in 1865, when St. Bridget's Church was to be solemnly dedicated by Archbishop Joseph Sadoc Alemany.The church was perched on a sand on the southwest corner of Van Ness Avenue and Broadway, in a region then called the Outside Lands.
The dedication had been planned for Sunday, January 31, but it had rained all the night before, making the corner inaccessible, and it was not until two weeks later that worshipers felt able to attempt the perilous expedition to the new church.
Romanesque Beauty: The architects Shea & Shea
designed the new St. Brigid's Church to be built at
Van Ness Avenue and Broadway in 1900.
When Archbishop Alemany was reported to have spent $5,000 for the site, which embraced the entire block, he was criticized for his "archi-episcopal extravagance." But the single-story wooden building was frugal in its simplicity. It consisted of two apartments, the front a church and the read a sacristy and a residence for its Belgian pastor, Father James Henry Aerden.
In the early city, where streets were mud, macadam, or cobblestone, flat stones were needed for all the intersections, and the generous Boards of Works laid these down regardless of expense because they wanted to see stonecutters make a good living.
When the era of asphalt dawned and the stones had to be uprooted, Father John Cottle of St. Bridget's bought them up and stored them on the vacant lot next to the old church. By 1900, he had enough of the discarded granite slabs to put architects, stonecutters, and masons to work on a new church. Lombardic-Romanesque in style, it was built of brick and terra-cotta above the stone foundation and featured a 120-foot campanile capped by a loggia for a bell or chimes.
In Ireland, "Brigid" was the new anti-English way of spelling "Bridget," and now St. Brigid's became the preferred name for the church.
In 1930, the entire entrance and parts of the upper facade were remodeled to make the church more truly Romanesque.
(The above was excerpted from the article)