On Protecting Dorothy Day's Retreat

"'Nothing is more beautiful than the soft sound of waves on the beach,' Dorothy Day, the Catholic social activist and author, wrote in her diary on Dec. 12, 1953. “I hope and pray someday to have a house looking out on the bay, a little up off the beach so it will be away from the danger of the tide.'

"It was on that beach, on the South Shore of Staten Island, that Ms. Day, then a bohemian anarchist, had her religious awakening in 1927. Ms. Day, who founded the Catholic Worker movement, would return often to that beach, but it was not until 1972, with $250 she borrowed, that she finally got her little refuge by the bay, a pair of bungalows that were part of a 1920s retreat known as Spanish Camp.

"'There were two rooms, kitchen in the back, writing room in the front room in sight of the bay,' recalled Jim Forest, a friend of Ms. Day as well as one of her biographers and a former editor of The Catholic Worker newspaper. 'Very plain, very uncluttered. . . .'"

A recent New York Times article reported on an initiative to protect the remains of Dorothy Day's beachside property.

To access the New York Times complete report, Please visit:

New York Times: Dorothy Day's Retreat Is Now a Vacant Lot, but a Bid to Protect It Survives (26 OCT 15)