St. Gabriel's Roman Catholic Church (Bronx, New York) site of the rectory. St. Gabriel's Roman Catholic Church (Bronx, New York) St. Gabriel's Roman Catholic Church is a parish located in the Riverdale section of The Bronx, New York. The parish was created in 1939 by Francis Spellman, then the Archbishop of New York, as the successor to the St. Gabriel’s Church on East 37th Street in Manhattan, which was razed in 1937 to accommodate the construction of the Queens-Midtown tunnel. The pews, altars and statues of the original church were relocated to the new structure, and many of the church’s Irish-American congregants also moved to the Bronx to
History of New York City (1855–1897) movement of the 1950s. Pre-war steam ferries had already made Brooklyn Heights into a bedroom community for affluent professionals on Wall Street and other urban areas. Elevated railroads, operated by the Manhattan Railway Company, and other new public transport expanded the commuter area of New York, allowing development of suburbs for commuters of more modest means in Upper West Side and other distant areas. Plans were made for subways to still more remote exurbs such as Harlem and the West Bronx. In the late 19th century, the island's schist bedrock encouraged the early skyscrapers whose successors characterize its skyline today.