Fast-moving demolition levels former monastery next to Virtua Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital

CAMDEN — A monastery that’s loomed over the city’s landscape for almost 100 years is disappearing fast.

A demolition crew earlier this month began razing the Gothic compound on Haddon Avenue next to Virtua Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital.

Now, once-imposing buildings have given way to growing piles of stone and rubble — although that’s all still behind a perimeter of thick stone walls and iron gates.

Office building disappears:South Jersey's Grand Canyon appears at Camden demolition site

A church tower came down Wednesday at the property, which served for decades as the home of cloistered nuns.

That left intact only a part of the compound near the Euclid Avenue intersection.

The demolition is making way for a parking lot for Virtua Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, the monastery’s neighbor and owner.

The hospital plans to use an existing parking lot as the site of a six-story patient tower.

The tower is to hold 78 private rooms and 18 intensive care beds, according to an application approved by Camden’s planning board earlier this year.

“The new tower will include some operating rooms; other operating rooms will remain in the existing hospital and will undergo updates and renovations,” Virtua spokesman Daniel Moise said in a statement.

“The lobby of the new tower will eventually become the main entrance to the hospital,” he added.

The work is not expected to affect the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes atop the hospital.

“The statue itself is in good condition,” Moise said.

The monastery, on the other hand, was vacant for the past decade and considered unsafe, according to Evesham-based Virtua.

A stained glass window and other items with religious significance were saved from demolition and donated to the Diocese of Camden.

Virtua also plans to use some stone from the compound in the hospital landscape.

The property was deconsecrated after the last three nuns in the convent moved to a motherhouse in New York state, Moise said.

Several nuns had been buried at the complex since its construction in 1927. Moise said their remains were relocated when the property became vacant.

Jim Walsh is a senior reporter at the Courier-Post, Burlington County Times and The Daily Journal. Reach him at jwalsh@cpsj.com.