It is Thanksgiving weekend. We celebrated the holiday with our family, we spent time with family and friends on Friday, and now here we are another long weekend and what is there to do?
I search and internet and BINGO! I find a great idea of a Saturday afternoon. The boys and I are heading to Lower Manhattan and exploring the catacombs under the Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral. And just like that we are in the car and heading East towards the Lincoln Tunnel.
I found a tour on Google which cost $35.00 per ticket on Tommysnewyork.com titled “The Catacombs by Candlelight!”. I read the preview it sound interesting and so we were booked to be led underground at 3:00 pm. $105.00 and we have our next adventure.
The Basilica of Saint Patrick’s Old Cathedral is located at 260–264 Mulberry Street between Prince and Houston Streets. We arrived, as luck would have it we had 15 minutes before the tour started and we found parking on the street within a few short feet of where we needed to be. Everything was falling into place nicely. The 90-minute tour was led by Tommy. He was so informative and very personable.
We started outside on the grounds of the church touring the cemetery. The Basilica is the first cathedral church for the Diocese of New York. It was created by Pope Pius VII in 1808, it is the second Catholic church in Manhattan, and third Catholic church in all of New York State. The tombstones dated back to the early 1800s and the wall that surrounds the church was built by the trustees in the 1830s.
As we entered the church we learned that the baptism shown in the move “The Godfather” was filmed inside of this church at the baptismal font. The church is beautiful filled with so much history. The original organ is still played at every mass.
While in the catacombs we came to ur first stop which was the vault of the Lynch family. Dominick Lynch, was a member of The Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in the City of New York. This was very interesting to me since my maiden name is Lynch. It turns out Dominick Lynch was a founding Trustee of St. Peter’s Church and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and he and his family are buried in the catacombs of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral. Also interesting to me was the fact that the vault next to the Lynch’s was the McCarthy’s. It was explained that the McCarthy family married into the Lynch family. The reason this was interesting to me is McCarthy is my grandmother Lynch’s maiden name. At this point I was more interested than ever in the history of this church and its founding trustees.
If you are history buff there is a lot of history here to be learned. The Bowery Boys were part of our story, as was the Five Points any anyone who has watched the movie “Gangs of NY” have heard of the Five Points. Not only was this church part of that movie, it was also part of the real life history of the movie. In fact, the 6′ wall that surrounds the church was built by the Irish to save the Irish Catholic church from being burned down by the nativist group/gang.
Also learned on this tour was the fact that the funeral of “Big Tim” Sullivan, the famous Tammany Hall politician, is buried here. Upon his death his funeral attracted 25,000 to the streets surrounding the Old Cathedral in 1913.
After our tour we bid farewell to my long lost relatives, and took a walk to Little Italy for dinner at Paesano’s the dinner was delicious. We then left and walked off dinner as we headed to Palermo’s for dessert. We gorged our selves on Tiramisu, Peanut butter pie, and cheesecake and going to an authentic italian place that isn’t as famous as Ferrara’s saved us a bundle. 
After dessert, we walked around Little Italy and head back through NoLIta and into Chinatown… we took in the sights and smells and headed back to our car. We then drove uptown to Madison and 5th Ave. with our windows down so we could Listen to the Christmas music that was filling the streets and watched the Christmas light display that Saks was now showing on the side of their building.
It was now 9:00 and we all were ready to head back to NJ another page of memories for our family story.
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