St. Patrick's Cathedral (New York)

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St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York
St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York

The St. Patrick's Cathedral is the largest built in neo-Gothic style cathedral in the United States . It's 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 . St. Patrick's Parish is bounded by 59th Street , 3rd Avenue , 44th Street, and 7th Avenue and is 302 blocks.

history

The site of today's cathedral was bought on March 6, 1810 for $ 11,000 to be able to build a school for Catholic young men there, which was run by Jesuits . This school failed and in 1813 the property was sold on to Dom Augustin de Lestrange , the abbot of a Trappist convent. The monks came from the French Abbey of La Trappe and fled to America because they were persecuted in France. In the monastery they hosted and about 33 orphans. After the fall of Napoleon in 1814, the Trappists returned to France and gave up their property. The orphanage was continued by the Diocese of New York until the late 19th century.

Pope Pius IX elevated the diocese of New York, founded in 1808, to an 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 Streets. 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.

Rose window on the west facade

The foundation stone of the new cathedral was laid on August 15, 1858, south of the diocese's orphanage and roughly north of the then densely populated area of ​​New York. The cathedral was designed in a neo-Gothic style by James Renwick, Jr.

Work began in 1858 but was suspended 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 what was then the edge of the city center. The archbishop's house and rectory were added from 1882 to 1884, the adjoining school, which no longer exists, opened in 1882. The towers on the western front were added from 1885 to 1888. In 1901 a number of 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 large organ was installed and the sanctuary was enlarged.

In December 1976, St. Patrick's Cathedral was granted National Historic Landmark status and was entered on the National Register of Historic Places .

Architecture peculiarities

inside view
  • 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 2,400 people. The spiers tower 101 meters (330 feet) above street level.
  • The windows were designed by artists from Chartres , Birmingham and Boston . The large rose window is one of Charles Connick's main works .
  • The altar of St. Michael and that of St. Ludwig were designed by Tiffany & Co., the altar of St. Elisabeth by Paolo Medici from Rome.
  • The Way of the Cross won an art prize at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 .
  • The pietà of the cathedral is three times larger than Michelangelo's pietà .
  • A bust of Pope John Paul II commemorating his visit in 1978 is in the back of the cathedral.
  • Cardinal Francis Spellman had a major renovation of the chancel done in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The bronze canopy in the chancel 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 University Church of Fordham University on Rose Hill in the Bronx, the Alma Mater Spellmans,
  • 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 that were removed to position the baptismal font in the north transept.

Organs

Grand Gallery Organ

St. Patrick has two organs : the Grand Gallery Organ with Echowerk (Nave Organ) in the balustrade of the main nave and the Chancel Organ in the northern arcade. The entire organ system consists of 12 divisions with a total of 9,838 pipes and 177 registers . Both organs can be played individually or together from the two identical, five-manual console.

The first organs were built in 1879 and 1880. George Jardine & Son (New York City) built a mechanical instrument with four manuals and 51 registers on the large gallery, while JH & CS Odell (New York City) built a mechanical instrument with 2 manuals and 20 registers in the chancel.

Both instruments were replaced in 1928 and 1930 by today's instruments (Altar Organ 1928, Opus 3920; Emporenorgel 1930, Opus 5918), which were built by George Kilgen & Son (St. Louis, Missouri). In the course of a comprehensive overhaul of the organ from 1993, two new (identical) five-manual console tables were installed, the two hand-carved organ brochures were restored and the organ works were cleaned and restored by the Paragallo Pipe Organ Company (Paterson, New York). Most recently, the Echowerk (Echo Organ) underwent a comprehensive tonal revision and added a principal choir. It is now referred to as the Nave Organ.

Grand Gallery Organ

The Grand Gallery Organ has 144 registers, 15 transmissions and 9 extended registers.

Chancel organ

The Chancel Organ has 34 registers, 14 transmissions and 2 extended registers.

crypt

  • The eight deceased Archbishops of New York: six of them were cardinals whose galeros were hung in the chancel above their graves. Cardinal Spellman's hat was the same as that of Pope Pius XII. wore when this was a cardinal.
  • Pierre Toussaint donated money to rebuild the old St. Peter's Church after it burned down. He helped raise funds to build the old St. Patrick's Cathedral in Lower Manhattan (it was the second Catholic church in New York to be founded in 1809). He was buried in the graveyard of the 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 today's St. Patrick's Cathedral.
  • Archbishop Fulton Sheen was Adjutor of the Archdiocese of New York from 1941 to 1966, National Director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, and later for a short time Bishop of the Diocese of Rochester . 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 to be buried in New York Cathedral, although he was never bishop of New York.
  • Archbishop John Maguire, a longtime Archdiocese official and Deputy Archbishop of New York under Cardinal Spellman and Terence Cooke.
  • Mgr. Michael J. Lavelle, who was rector of the cathedral in the 1930s, is buried in the crypt. According to one anecdote, Archbishop Spellman, who was born and raised in the Archdiocese of Boston, first got into an argument with Lavelle after he was named 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 Spellman could only carry out his plans "over my corpse." After Lavelle died, Spellman made an exception - it was planned to use the crypt only for the Archbishops of New York - and had Lavelle buried there.

The crypt is usually not open to the public. Because the relics of three candidates for a beatification process (Pierre Toussaint, Fulton Sheen and Terence Cooke) are in the crypt, it is possible to obtain a special permit, for example to pray for a deceased family member.

Famous people whose funeral ceremonies were held in the cathedral but who are buried elsewhere included New York Yankee greats Babe Ruth and Billy Martin , football coach Vince Lombardi , singer Celia Cruz , the US Senator from New York and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and the longtime owner of the New York Giants , Wellington Mara . Special memorial services were held in the cathedral following the deaths of Andy Warhol and Joe DiMaggio .

St. Patrick's in Popular Culture

Scenes from the comedy Little Nicky and Mr. Deeds of Adam Sandler were filmed in the cathedral, as well as parts of Daredevil . St. Patrick's also served as a backdrop in the Freedom Fighters video game .

Donald Trump said in a brief cameo in Woody Allen's film Celebrity that he was in the process of buying the cathedral so that it might be demolished and a "very, very tall and beautiful building" built 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 sponsor of the competition was the Boston Beer Company , which makes Samuel Adams beer and encouraged 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 saving her.

There are also uses of the building in literature - for example Nelson DeMille's novel The Cathedral (Cathedral) takes place almost exclusively in the church, where on St. Patrick's Day members of a splinter group of the IRA - the Fennier - entrench themselves with hostages with threats to blow up and destroy the cathedral, to blackmail the release of political prisoners in the province of Ulster , Northern Ireland.

Individual evidence

  1. Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: New York. National Park Service , accessed January 31, 2020.
    St. Patrick's Cathedral on the National Register Information System. National Park Service , accessed January 31, 2020.
  2. Description (PDF)
  3. The Smoking Gun: Archives

Web links

Commons : St. Patrick's Cathedral (Manhattan)  - Collection of images, videos, and audio files

Coordinates: 40 ° 45 ′ 31 ″  N , 73 ° 58 ′ 35 ″  W.