Schools
Saint Anastasia's Story
History of a local religious institution that harkens back to the simpler days of yesteryear.
With Christmas just six days away, Patch felt it was only fitting to feature Saint Anastasia's Church as this week's Remembered Place.
Little did we know that the history of Saint Anastasia's mirrors closely that of the development of northeast Queens.
Founded in 1915, when Saint Anastasia’s first opened, there were only one hundred parishioners that celebrated mass inside a small white wooden structure that sat on a small wooded plot of land along Northern Boulevard.
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But within just a few short generations, much like Little Neck itself, the population of St. Anastasia's exploded, thanks to a significant increase in local births and baptisms as well as the widening of Northern Boulevard and extension of the Long Island Rail Road into the area.
So in 1922, led by then pastor Father Clark, St. Anastasia's church would purchase the 20 lots of land on which it now sits, laying the foundation for a campus that would one day become the home of Saint Anastasia's Parish.
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Before long, plans for a school equipped with a small gymnasium and auditorium were drafted, and in 1929, the first administration and teaching staff, consisting entirely of nuns from the Sisters of Mercy from Dallas, Pennsylvania, began accepting students.
By 1952, enrollment in Saint Anastasia School shot up to over one thousand students, peaking in 1966 with sixteen hundred children studying at Little Neck's first and only Roman Catholic kindergarten to eighth grade institution.
And so waned the glory days of Saint Anastasia's Church, which at its heights had well over 10,000 worshipers and students.
As the next decades passed, numbers decreased, and today Saint Anastasia's claims just under six thousand parishioners of the church with a little over 300 students enrolled in the school.
Even so, it strives to remain a vibrant pillar of the community, offering space to many community organizations like the Ladies Auxiliary, the Knights of Columbus, and to the Croatian Community which offers cultural instruction to its young people in the area at Saint Anastasia's.
Still, it all began with a humble clapboard country church made of local lumber and a community of Catholics searching for a home.