YES IT WAS A HOME FOR GIRLS AND WAS RUN BY NUNS.IN FACT THEY WOULD MAKE THE WAEFERS USED FOR COMMUNION.WE AS ALTER BOYS WOULD GO AND PICK THEM UP,WE WOULD BE WISTLED AT BY THE GIRLS ...IT WAS TORN DOWN IN THE LATE SIXTIES AN THE ATLANTIC TOWERS HOUSEING STANDS IN ITS PLACE [REMEMBER THE BARB WIRES ALL AROUND THE BUILDING]
Yes I do remember the barb wires around the walls as well at the top of the walls there were broken pieces of glass cemented to the top of the wall. I guess they wanted to make sure those girls didn't get out. I also would go pickup the waffers from there for Our Lady of Lourdes Church. I also remember the Gotti family living there before they tore it down for the projects.
It was a place that the sisters ran for wayward girls.........I visited it once as I knew someone who worked there...............the projects they built in place of it are really ugly.............they remind me of a high-rise jail...........
I lived on Atlantic Ave directly across the street. The long wall facing our house enclosed the part of the complex that were gardens and tennis courts. Yes, I remember the broken glass embedded on the top of that wall. Since I was a kid at the time, it was never explained to me why these girls were imprisoned by the Catholic Church. Obviously something I shouldn't have known about. Interesting fact: When the Dodgers were looking to build a new stadium, the City offered that location to the team. I wonder what would have been different in that neighborhood if a new stadium had been built there?
If you Google "In the Footprints of the Good Shepherd"
you'll find an online copy of a book that gives a history of the U.S. Convents of the Good Shepherd.
There's a 2003 movie "The Magdalene Sisters" set in 1964 Ireland about the "Magdalene laundry". These places were work houses at best & prisons at worst. Not the Church at it's finest.
I think that everyone in the neighborhood knew it was a home for wayward girls but didn't know what they actually did. Most people thought it was unwed mothers. I remember my mother as well as other mothers in the neighborhood threatening to put us in there if we didn't behave. The home being there may have well been the reason why more of us didn't wind up in there. I remember them calling out from the window to guys passing by but I didn't know what they said because my mother put her hands over my ears.