Advocates work to preserve St. Anthony’s

Brier Hill neighborhood

By Melinda Gray

TheNewsOutlet.org

As a pot of tomato sauce cooked on the stove in the kitchen of his small restaurant, Joe Marsco looked down Belmont Avenue toward the Brier Hill neighborhood where he learned to cook.

Marsco, owner of Joe Restaurant, said he learned more than how to cook in that old Italian neighborhood.

“I learned about life there — about what really mattered — about family and doing what’s right,” he said.

As he described his Brier Hill childhood, he reminisced about stopping at as many houses as he could to eat Sunday dinners with neighbors in what he called “the greatest neighborhood of all time.”

The Brier Hill neighborhood has since declined, but former residents, including Marsco, have been working to preserve some aspects of the former neighborhood and way of life.

Their latest battle has been with officials of the Diocese of Youngstown, who had been discussing plans to merge or close St. Anthony’s Church, a Brier Hill landmark.

Brier Hill, between Belmont Avenue and the U.S. Route 422 corridor between Liberty and Girard, was once known as Youngstown’s “Little Italy” district because of the number of Italian immigrants who moved to the neighborhood to work in the steel mills.

“Many [immigrants] knew each other,” said Marsco. “Brier Hill represented a new beginning for them. A chance to make it in the United States.”

Marsco said he and other Brier Hill loyalists worked hard to convince diocese officials to keep the church in the neighborhood open for at least another year or two.

In 1957, St. Anthony Church was established in the center of the neighborhood. The church membership grew, and officials added a school with a large gymnasium, library and banquet hall.

Brier Hill resident Theresa Polovischak, 83, said she attended St. Anthony’s every day. She said she remembers when the church and neighborhood were crowded with people and how bingo and generous parishioners helped pay for the church.

“The community of Brier Hill had a saying: ‘One hand helps the other,’” Polovischak said. “And every resident strived to live by that.”

In late 2009, the Diocese of Youngstown announced plans to close and consolidate some of its churches, and St. Anthony’s was considered vulnerable.

The diocese cited a decrease in availability of priests among other factors as a cause for its proposed mergers and closings of local churches.

Instead of closing St. Anthony’s, the diocese chose to merge the church with Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church near downtown.

The decision not only saved the oldest Italian parish in Mahoning County but also gave Brier Hill advocates hope for a new future.

“All of the parishes have two years to implement the program and come up with a plan for the mergers,” said Father Nick Shori, head of the Youngstown Diocese’s reorganization project.

“The most important question is to determine a Mass schedule that one priest can handle,” Shori said.

Also important is figuring out which buildings to close and which are structurally sound and worth investment, Shori said.

“We will not let any of the buildings be used for anything that is not consistent with the history of that place,” Shori said.

Diocese officials will also decide whether to sell or demolish them. Any property not sold will remain in the hands of the diocese.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU radio and The Vindicator.