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St. mary’S cHurcH
St. Mary’s Church shares its birth year with the City of Rochester.
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Rochester’s oldest Catholic church still in operation was founded in 1834 by a group of parishioners who had purchased a building on the site of the present-day Rochester Riverside Convention Center. The parish was part of the Archdiocese of New York until the territory was split off into the Diocese of Buffalo in 1847 and the
Diocese of Rochester in 1868.
Father Bernard O’Reilly was the rst pastor.
The site for the current church site was purchased in 1852, and Buffalo’s Bishop John Timon blessed the cornerstone on Sept. 18, 1853, and construction was completed in 1858. In 1891, the current Stations of the Cross were installed, and a slanted church oor was added. The bell tower was added in 1940.
A re broke out in the basement of the church on Easter Sunday 1971. Renovation took place quickly, as the main church was not heavily damaged. The church and rectory at 15 St. Mary’s Place in Rochester were added to the National Registry of Historic Places in 1992.
St. Mary’s remains home to the Downtown Community Forum, which began in 1984 as a means of addressing social-justice issues. It operates in the church’s Dugan Center, which was named after Ray Dugan, a parishioner and usher for more than 60 years.
The church formed a partnership with Blessed Sacrament and St. Boniface churches in 2006. Nearly a decade later, the three worship sites became the Southeast Catholic Community.