Description of the attraction
St. Patrick's Catholic Cathedral is perhaps the most famous temple in New York. Surrounded by the skyscrapers of Fifth Avenue, it is not lost against their background: the hundred-meter Gothic spiers are a noticeable landmark in the "stone jungle" of Manhattan.
The history of the temple reflects the history of the city itself. The cathedral has a predecessor - the much more modest "old" St. Patrick's Cathedral on Milberry Street, also in Manhattan. Built in 1809-1815, it has long been the center of the Roman Catholic Diocese of New York. However, by the middle of the 19th century, there were so many Catholic immigrants (Irish, Italians, immigrants from Austria-Hungary) in the city that the small church ceased to accommodate them. In 1853, Archbishop John Joseph Hughes announced his intention to build a new cathedral in the center of Manhattan Island.
The idea was ridiculed as "Hughes' stupidity": the site chosen for the construction was far outside the city limits. But the archbishop was convinced that the time would come when the neo-Gothic cathedral, the most beautiful in the New World, planned by him, would be in the heart of the city. Money for the construction of the temple was donated by both a poor flock and a group of very wealthy parishioners (103 businessmen).
The first stone of the building, designed by architect James Renwick Jr., was laid in 1858. Construction was interrupted for the Civil War, when there were no workers or money. The cathedral opened its doors to believers in 1879, fifteen years after the death of Archbishop Hughes. But the work continued long after that: the spiers were completed only in 1888, the chapel of Our Lady - in 1900, the chapel of Our Lady of Czestochowa was added in our century. Now the temple is being restored. Recently, its spiers, freed from the forests, appeared before the townspeople and tourists not dirty brown from acid rain and exhaust, but shining, creamy white, as they were intended.
The cathedral is colossal: it occupies an entire block between 50th and 51st streets. It can simultaneously accommodate 2,200 people. The huge bronze doors of the central entrance (each weighing nine tons) are decorated with sculptures of saints. The vaults of the temple rise to incredible heights and sink there in the twilight. The exquisite Chapel of Our Lady, designed by Charles Matthews, is illuminated through magnificent stained-glass windows that have been made and installed over a quarter of a century. The altars of the chapel of St. Elizabeth and the chapel of St. John the Baptist were created by Italian masters. The American sculptor William Ordway Partridge sculpted the Pieta located here, which is three times larger than Michelangelo's Pieta. Not far from the entrance, you can see the bust of John Paul II, erected in memory of the visit of the Pope.
The cathedral lives an intense spiritual life every day, and once a year, on March 17, St. Patrick's Day, it becomes the real center of New York. On the day of the saint who brought Christianity to Ireland, up to two million people parade along Fifth Avenue, dressed in green (this is the color of Ireland and the shamrock, the symbol of the Trinity). And the parade is preceded by a festive Mass in St. Patrick's Cathedral.
