St. Patrick's Cathedral is the largest Gothic Revival cathedral in the United States. It is located on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, between 50th and 51st streets, directly across from Rockefeller Center. The Cathedral is the official residence of the Catholic Archbishop of New York. The parish of St. Patrick's is bounded by 59th Street, 3rd Avenue, 44th Street and 7th Avenue and comprises 302 blocks.
The site of the present cathedral was purchased on March 6, 1810 for
$11,000 to build a school for Catholic young men, run by Jesuits. This
school failed and in 1813 the property was resold to Dom Augustin de
Lestrange, abbot of a Trappist convent. The monks came from the French
abbey of La Trappe and had fled to America because they were being
persecuted in France. In the monastery they also looked after about 33
orphans. After the fall of Napoleon in 1814, the Trappists returned to
France and gave up their real estate holdings. The orphanage was
continued by the Diocese of New York into the late 19th century.
Pope Pius IX raised the diocese of New York, founded in 1808, to the
archdiocese in 1850. Archbishop John Joseph Hughes then announced his
intention to build a new cathedral to replace St. Patrick's Old
Cathedral, which was located at the intersection of Prince and Mott
Streets and Mulberry Street. The old cathedral was destroyed by fire in
1866 and rebuilt and consecrated in 1868. It is the oldest Catholic
church in New York and serves as a parish church. Lorenzo da Ponte was
buried here.
The cornerstone of the new cathedral was laid on
August 15, 1858, south of the diocesan orphanage and about north of the
then heavily populated area of New York. The cathedral was designed by
James Renwick, Jr. in the Gothic Revival style.
Work began in
1858 but was interrupted during the American Civil War and resumed in
1865. The cathedral was completed in 1878 and consecrated on May 25,
1879 by Archbishop John Cardinal McCloskey. Its enormous dimensions
dominated the edge of the city center at that time. The archbishop's
house and rectory were added in 1882-84, the adjoining school, which no
longer exists, opened in 1882. The towers on the west front were added
in 1885-88. In 1901 some additions began, including a chapel of Our Lady
designed by Charles T. Mathews. The cathedral was renovated between 1927
and 1931; during this time the great organ was installed and the
sanctuary enlarged.
In December 1976, St. Patrick's Cathedral
received National Historic Landmark status and was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places.
The cathedral was built from white marble quarried in New York and
Massachusetts. The building is 123 meters long and 53 meters wide and
can accommodate around 2400 people. The spiers rise 101 meters (330
feet) above street level.
The windows were designed by artists from
Nantes, Chartres, Birmingham and Boston, including by the glass painter
Henri Ely, who came from Kassel. The Great Rose Window is one of Charles
Connick's major works.
The altar of St. Michael and that of St. Louis
were designed by Tiffany & Co., the altar of St. Elisabeth by Paolo
Medici from Rome.
The Stations of the Cross won an artistic prize at
the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.
The cathedral's Pietà is three
times larger than Michelangelo's Pietà.
A bust of Pope John Paul II,
commemorating his visit in 1978, is located at the back of the
cathedral.
Francis Cardinal Spellman undertook a major renovation of
the sanctuary in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The bronze altar canopy
is part of this work and the high altar that was there has been removed.
The original high altar of St. Patrick's is now in the varsity church at
Fordham University on Rose Hill in the Bronx, the alma mater of
Spellman,
In the 1980s, John Joseph had Cardinal O'Connor carry out
renovations at his own expense; noteworthy is the construction of a new
stone altar in the center of the sanctuary, which can be better seen by
the faithful. The altar was built from parts of one of the side altars,
which were removed to position the baptismal font in the north transept.
St. Patrick's has two organs: the large gallery organ (Grand Gallery
Organ) with echo mechanism (Nave Organ) in the balustrade of the nave
and the altar organ (Chancel Organ) in the northern arcade. The entire
organ system consists of 12 divisions with a total of 9,838 pipes and
119 registers. Both organs can be played individually or together from
the two identical, five-manual consoles.
The first organs were
built in 1879 and 1880 respectively. George Jardine & Son (New York
City) built a mechanical instrument with four manuals and 51 registers
on the large gallery, the J.H. & CS Odell (New York City) built a
mechanical instrument with 2 manuals and 20 registers in the sanctuary.
Both instruments were replaced by today's instruments by George
Kilgen & Son (St. Louis, Missouri) in 1928 (altar organ, Opus 3920) and
1930 (gallery organ, Opus 5918). A major overhaul of the organ by the
Paragallo Pipe Organ Company (Paterson, New York) beginning in 1993
included installing two new (identical) five-manual consoles, restoring
the two hand-carved organ cases, and cleaning and restoring the organ
works. Most recently, the Echowerk (Echo Organ) underwent a
comprehensive tonal revision and a principal choir was added. It is now
referred to as the nave organ.
Grand Gallery Organ
The Grand
Gallery Organ has 101 registers and numerous transmissions and extended
registers.
Chance organ
The Chancel Organ is based on a
multiplex system: 48 stops are obtained from 18 stops.
Bells
In the north tower, at a height of 55 m, there is a carillon of 19 bells
with a pitch range of almost two octaves. It was cast in 1897 by the
Paccard Bell Foundry near the French town of Annecy and blessed after
the crossing on August 15, 1897 by Archbishop Michael Augustine
Corrigan.
The eight archbishops of New York who died: six of them were
cardinals, whose galeros were hung in the chancel over their tombs.
Cardinal Spellman's hat was the same hat worn by Pope Pius XII. wore
when he was a cardinal.
Pierre Toussaint donated money to help
rebuild the old St Peter's Church after it burned down. He helped raise
funds for the construction of the old St. Patrick's Cathedral in Lower
Manhattan (it was the second Catholic church in New York, founded in
1809). He was buried in the graveyard of old St. Patrick's Cathedral.
After Cardinal John O'Connor opened the diocesan beatification process,
he had Toussaint's remains moved to the crypt below the main altar in
what is now St Patrick's Cathedral.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen was
coadjutor of the Archdiocese of New York from 1941 to 1966, national
director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, and later
bishop of the Diocese of Rochester for a short time. After his death in
1979 he was buried in the crypt of St. Patrick's Cathedral where he
preached many sermons. Sheen was the first bishop who, although never
Bishop of New York, was buried in New York Cathedral.
Archbishop John
Maguire, a longtime archdiocesan priest and coadjutor Archbishop of New
York under Cardinals Spellman and Terence Cooke.
Buried in the crypt
is Monsignor Michael J. Lavelle, who was rector of the cathedral in the
1930s. According to an anecdote, Archbishop Spellman, who was born and
raised in the Archdiocese of Boston, was the first to fall out with
Lavelle after he was appointed Archbishop of New York and announced his
plans to renovate the sanctuary. Lavelle, who had lived in New York all
his life and had been rector of the cathedral for many years, said that
Spellman could only carry out his plans "over my dead body". After
Lavelle died, Spellman made an exception—it was planned that the crypt
would only be used by the archbishops of New York—and had Lavelle buried
there.
The crypt is not normally open to the public. Because the
relics of three candidates for a beatification process are in the crypt
(Pierre Toussaint, Fulton Sheen and Terence Cooke), it is possible to
get a special permit, for example to pray for a deceased family member.
Notable people whose funerals were held at the cathedral but are
buried elsewhere include New York Yankee greats Babe Ruth and Billy
Martin, football coach Vince Lombardi, singer Celia Cruz, US Senator
from New York York and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and
longtime New York Giants owner Wellington Mara. Special memorial
services were held at the cathedral following the deaths of Andy Warhol
and Joe DiMaggio.
Scenes from Adam Sandler's comedies Little Nicky and Mr. Deeds were
filmed in the cathedral, as well as parts of Daredevil. St. Patrick's
also served as a background in the Freedom Fighters video game.
Donald Trump, in a brief cameo in Woody Allen's film Celebrity, says he
is in the process of buying the cathedral, with the intention of perhaps
tearing it down and building a "very, very tall and beautiful building"
in its place.
In 2002, a couple had sex in the lobby of St.
Patrick's - as part of the "Sex for Sam 3" contest on Opie and Anthony's
radio show, which resulted in the popular duo being fired from radio
station WNEW-FM. The contest sponsor was the Boston Beer Company, which
makes the Samuel Adams beer, and encouraged the couples to have sex in
unusual places.
In the 2002 film Spider-Man starring Tobey
Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, Spider-Man drops Mary Jane Watson on a
rooftop garden directly across from St. Patrick's Cathedral after
rescuing her.
The building is also used in literature - for
example Nelson DeMille's novel The Cathedral (Cathedral) is set almost
exclusively in the church, where on St. Patrick's Day members of a
splinter group of the IRA - the Fennians - hole up with hostages in
order to with threatening to blow up and destroy the cathedral, to
blackmail the release of political prisoners in the province of Ulster,
Northern Ireland.