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Chelsea-Based Order of Nuns Leaving 14th St. Building Ahead of Demolition

By Maya Rajamani | June 22, 2017 6:36pm | Updated on June 23, 2017 1:03pm
 The new owners of El Carmelo Residence plan to demolish the building, city Department of Buildings records show.
El Carmelo Residence
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CHELSEA — An order of nuns who ran a transitional home for young women on West 14th Street for decades is vacating the building amid dwindling membership and a plan by the property's new owner to demolish it.

Hermanas Carmelitas Teresas de San Jose — a Spain-based order of the Carmelite Sisters — recently sold its building at 249 W. 14th St., near Eighth Avenue, Sister Fabia Pena told DNAinfo New York.

The new owner plans to raze the five-story building, according to city Department of Building records. It's unclear who purchased the building, though its air rights were bought by Alfa Development.

The building known as El Carmelo Residence had been operating as a hostel of sorts since the late 1980s, offering women between the ages of 18 and 36 an inexpensive place to stay after they moved to New York City to work or study, Pena, 56, said.

But the order decided to sell the residence as its numbers dwindled and the sisters stopped accepting residents this past December, she said.

“Young people don’t want to [become] sisters or priests,” she explained. “We don’t have enough sisters to continue this mission here.”

Sister Fabia Pena at El Carmelo Residence on West 14th Street (DNAinfo/Maya Rajamani)

One of the oldest orders of black nuns in the country recently put its building in Harlem up for sale for similar reasons.

At one point, El Carmelo Residence housed six Carmelite sisters and up to 36 young women at a time, Pena said.

The guests — who hailed from countries like India, Japan, Colombia and the Philippines — paid around $175 per week to stay in a two-bed room until they could find permanent housing in the city, she said.

Visitors didn’t have to be Catholic to rent a room at the residence, she noted.

“They were staying here because they don’t have any family [here], and hotels are very expensive,” she said.

The building at 249 W. 14th St. (DNAinfo/Maya Rajamani)

Now, only Pena and another, 78-year-old sister live at El Carmelo Residence. In July, they will move to Hermanas Carmelitas Teresas de San Jose’s residence in the Dominican Republic, she said.

The building’s new owner plans to replace the residence with a new apartment building, she added.

It wasn't immediately clear who the new owner was.

Pena — who moved to the U.S. from Spain in 1990 — said she would be sorry to leave the residence behind, though the building itself is “very old” and in poor condition.

“So many years here — we had people [we knew], we had friends in this country,” she said. “It gives a little pain, sadness.”

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that real estate firm Alfa Development purchased El Carmelo Residence. Alfa Development previously purchased the residence's air rights but did not buy the building itself.