St. Brigid's Roman Catholic Church, viewed from Tompkins Square Park, ca. 1977.

During the 1840s, a significant population of Irish immigrants settled in the Dry Dock District, in the present-day Alphabet City section of Manhattan's East Village. St. Brigid's was founded to serve this heavily Catholic community, with the cornerstone of the Patrick Keely-designed church laid in 1848.

During the late 1980s, St. Brigid's became aligned with protestors and the neighborhood's homeless and disadvantaged residents, especially during the Tompkins Square park riots and relate police actions.

By this time, the church's structure — built on piles in infilled marshland — had been deteriorating for some time (the church's twin steeples were dismantled in 1962, due to safety concerns). In 2001, longstanding structural concerns came to a head when the archdiocese ordered the church closed after engineers found it to be in imminent danger of collapse. In 2004, the parish was officially disbanded.

In July 2006, demolition began abruptly, after unsuccessful efforts buy the Committee to Save St. Brigid's to forestall the wrecking ball. After immediate public outcry, the Manhattan Supreme Court temporarily stayed demolition, before permanently halting proceedings in August.

Two years later, an anonymous gift of $20 million changed parish fortunes, funding a five year restoration project. Today, the renovated church is home to combined parishes of St. Brigid's and St. Emeric.