On what would have been her 129th birthday, Servant of God Dorothy Day finally got a street of her own in the borough she once called home.
Day lived on the South Shore of Staten Island in the 1920s, and in 1927, at age 30, she was baptized into the Catholic faith at Our Lady Help of Christians Church. She later moved back to the South Shore in the late 1950s when she purchased a cottage off Poillon Avenue.
The cottage was torn down several years ago, but New York City officially renamed the nearby street corner where it stood in her honor during a ceremony on Nov. 8, unveiling the new street sign — “Dorothy Day Way” — at the corner of Poillon Avenue and Zephyr Avenue.
Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, who devoted much of her life to helping the less fortunate, was born in Brooklyn on Nov. 8, 1897.
The street renaming marked the third time the city has paid tribute to Day.
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In May, the intersection of Pineapple and Henry streets in Brooklyn Heights — near her birthplace at 71 Pineapple Street — was officially named after her.
Before that, the city named one of its Staten Island ferries for her. The Dorothy Day celebrated its maiden voyage in 2023.
Day, designated a servant of God — the first step toward sainthood — in 2000, not only lived on Staten Island but is also buried in its Resurrection Cemetery.
Day’s connection to Staten Island was the reason advocates pushed for the city to name the street corner after her, said Deborah Sucich, founder and president of the Dorothy Day House of Hospitality on Staten Island and one of the people behind the advocacy effort.
“She fell in love with the beauty of it, and we know that she’s buried right on the South Shore of Staten Island at Resurrection Cemetery,” Sucich told The Tablet, “and we wanted to honor her legacy here on Staten Island.”
Day’s granddaughter, Martha Hennessy, who was speaking at a monastery in Baltimore and was unable to attend the ceremony, said she was delighted with the renaming.
“We’ll have lots of Dorothy Day Ways around the city,” she told The Tablet. “I think it’s lovely.”
Sucich, a consecrated virgin in the Diocese of Brooklyn, said that reading Day’s 1952 autobiography, “The Long Loneliness,” inspired her to help the underprivileged.
“It was really her conversion story that touched my heart. And the story of her love for her unborn baby … and the pain and heartache she went through after the abortion she had before she was Catholic, I think that’s what really touched my heart,” said Sucich, who called Day “an ambassador of peace.”
Day, a journalist and social activist, lived a wild, bohemian life in her 20s before converting to Catholicism in 1927. She had given birth to Tamar a year earlier, and in her autobiography, published in 1952, she writes about how her daughter’s birth changed her life.
Hennessy has followed in her grandmother’s footsteps as a peace activist.
“I think it’s wonderful to be naming streets after her as a way to remember her. But we need to study her and read her,” she said, pointing out Day’s anti-war stance and her work opposing nuclear proliferation.
Auxiliary Bishop Emeritus Peter Byrne of the Archdiocese of New York, who led the participants in prayer at the start of the street-naming ceremony and later celebrated Mass at Our Lady Help of Christians Church, said he hoped Day’s example of service would continue to inspire people.
“May we learn about her life and seek to imitate her virtues in Jesus’ name,” he said.