Adding to the destitution was the fact that casualties of the Civil War left many women widows and their children fatherless.
[2] It began with two buildings on 36th and 37th Streets in Manhattan, for boys under the care of the Christian Brothers, a congregation founded in France, in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, by St. John Baptiste de la Salle for the training and correction of wayward youth.
[4] Besides orphans placed there by the Charity Commission, and juvenile delinquents placed by the courts, the Protectory also accepted children placed there by parents or guardians unable to adequately provide for them.
Unlike many similar institutions, the Protectory provided training in skills that would allow its charges to make a living upon leaving.
It was felt that vocational studies should not be postponed until mature years, but should be commenced early, so as to accustom the boy to what may afterwards prove to be the means of earning his own livelihood when he shall have left the Protectory.
The boys learned printing in all its branches, photography, tailoring, shoemaking, laundry work, industrial and ornamental drawing, sign-painting, blacksmithing, plumbing, carpentry, bricklaying, stone-work, baking in its different branches, and in practical knowledge of boilers, engines, dynamos and electric wiring.
In 1920, the Lincoln Giants, a professional Negro league baseball team from Harlem moved from their old home park, Olympic Field (at Fifth Avenue and 136th Street), to the Catholic Protectory Oval in the Bronx.