“Leaning a little to the left”

    How funny you are today New York
    like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime
    and St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the left

        Frank O’Hara, “Steps”

[St. Brigid’s Roman Catholic Church, 119 Avenue B, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

The poet Bill Berkson, quoted in Brad Gooch’s City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara (1993):

“In 1961 Frank O’Hara and I were walking along First Avenue and noticed the funny steeples of Saint Bridget’s church on Tompkins Square Park in the distance — one steeple curved limply. We were delighted by the sight.”

It’s difficult to see a limp or leaning steeple in this photograph. It may be that by 1961 the lean was more pronounced. But in another old photograph, the northern (right) steeple appears to be leaning to the right. If you were walking on First Avenue, that steeple would be leaning to the left.

In an undated illustration from the church website, both steeples appear to tilt:

[Click for a larger view.]

If you straighten the drawing a bit, the northern steeple still leans.

O’Hara and Berkson wrote a number of St. Bridget poems together between 1960 and 1962, published by Adventures in Poetry in 1974 as Hymns of St. Bridget (mimeo, side-stapled, 20 pp., approx. 750 copies). A sample, from “St. Bridget’s Neighborhood”:

Her shoe fits today    It is Saint Bridget
turning the corner     She wears blue maybelline

on her eyelids and in a streak on her hair
She will never have a baby, thank goodness!

In 2001, Owl Press published the poems with previously unpublished O’Hara-Berkson works as Hymns of St. Bridget and Other Writings.

Brigid was the patronness saint of Ireland, a consecrated virgin and, as Wikipedia puts it, “patronness of many things” — including poetry. Pre-O’Hara-Berkson hymns give accounts of her life.

The church on Avenue B, now Sts. Brigid and Emeric, has had a long history of destruction and renewal. The church website notes that the steeples were removed in 1962 “due to maintenance and safety concerns.”

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

[“Steps”: from Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems (1964).]