St. Louis Cathedral (New Orleans)
The Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis, King of France , also St. Louis Cathedral , in New Orleans is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans . The church is located in the French Quarter of New Orleans on Place John Paul II .
History and architecture
The property is the oldest continuously used place of worship in the USA. The first church on the site of today's cathedral was completed in 1727. As the parish church of the capital of the French colony Louisiana , founded in 1718 , it received the patronage of the French national saint St. Ludwig .
On March 21, 1788, the church and numerous surrounding buildings fell victim to a fire disaster. The new building, begun the following year under Spanish colonial rule, was completed in 1794 and at the same time elevated to the status of the cathedral of the newly founded diocese of New Orleans.
In 1819, a decade and a half after the Louisiana Purchase , St. Louis received a bell tower for which the characteristic central façade tower was built. Most of the costs were provided by the city council.
Since the 1830s there were plans to adapt the cathedral to the growing need for space and representation. During the expansion work in 1849, the components that were supposed to be preserved collapsed, so that a completely new building was necessary. The plans were made by the French-born architect Jacques Nicolas Bussière de Pouilly , but the contract was withdrawn after the collapse. With the elevation of New Orleans to the archbishopric in 1850, St. Louis became a metropolitan cathedral.
The new cathedral is a classical basilica with the characteristics of the antebellum architecture of the southern states . The central nave spans a barrel vault , the flat-roofed side aisles divide galleries into two levels. As in the previous building, the facade was given two slender corner towers and a high central tower.
Pope Paul VI awarded the cathedral the rank of minor basilica in 1964 . Pope John Paul II visited them on September 12, 1987.
During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, St. Louis suffered only relatively minor damage. Water leaking through a hole in the roof damaged the organ.
organ
The organ of St. Louis Cathedral was built in 2004 by the American company Holtkamp. Some registers of the previous instruments by MPMöller (M) from 1950 and Otto Hofmann (H) from 1976 have been reused in the instrument. The organ has 54 sounding voices on three manuals and pedal. In view of the number of extended registers and some transmissions, the organ has 76 registers. The playing and stop actions are electro-pneumatic. After Hurricane Katrina, the instrument had to be repaired relatively slightly. For many years the organist of the church was the Polish pianist and composer Paul Emile Johns (1798–1860), a friend of Frédéric Chopin , to whom Johns dedicated his Four Mazurkas op. 7 (1832).
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
- Remarks
- M = pipe material from the previous instrument by MP Möller (1950)
- H = pipe material from the previous instrument by Otto Hofmann (1976)
- (GO) = Transmission from the Grand Orgue
- (Po) = transmission from the positif
- (Re) = transmission from the Récit
literature
- Alfred E. Lemmon, Music in St. Louis Cathedral , in: Cross, Crozier and Crucible , ed. by Glenn R. Conrad, New Orleans 1993
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d History
- ↑ JNB de Pouilly ( Memento of the original from April 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Encyclopedia of Louisiana
- ↑ gcatholic.org
- ↑ Edward Branley: History of the St. Louis Cathedral
- ↑ Detailed information about the organ ( Memento of the original from February 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Web links
Coordinates: 29 ° 57 '28.8 " N , 90 ° 3' 49.7" W.