The Design Transformation Of St. Patrick's Cathedral

The design transformation of the Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, as envisioned by Joseph Magnin, into the now standing St. Patrick’s Cathedral as the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese mirrors the evolution of the city itself, both religiously and politically. In 1836, the tension between Irish-Catholics and anti-Catholic Know-Nothing nativists led to a multitude of riots, physical confrontations, and shameful accusations against the parochial institution. The situation worsened for the Old St. Patrick’s and eventually ended with the structure gutted by fire in 1868. In a ceremony at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Archbishop Hughes proposed “to erect a Cathedral in the City of New York that may be… worthy as a public architectural monument,
The grand vertical scale of St. Patrick’s appears to work best with an open space as its surrounding, as it was designed to demark the highest elevation and thus center of the city based on perspective. When construction started, the site was a relatively open space. The cathedral was fronted by the mansions that ran across 5th Avenue. Surrounding the cathedral stood structures that held high prestige in society and further emphasized the cathedral as the center of focus. For a short time, facing St. Patrick’s, stood the Union Club, the oldest and most exclusive men’s social club in New York that hosted only the most powerful and wealthy of men. The club was eventually relocated to Park Avenue, replaced by the currently standing Olympic Tower. Eventually, the city’s skyscrapers began to enclose the cathedral, no longer holding its power based on height. The ground-breaking concept of the Olympic Tower, with its bronze colored glass mixed with its extensive height almost completely, obscures the north spires of St. Patrick’s
had to consciously incorporate the Gothic style of French buildings in a manner that reflected distinctive Catholic themes while also referencing current events in America. Renwick designed the cathedral to be different from other Gothic churches by staying with the classical Latin cross plan of the Old St. Patrick’s, reinforcing the concept of purity of style and harmony of proportions of its precedent. Cathedrals in the Middle Ages acted as a focal point for the townspeople instead of a retreat from life, the hub of life for both the elite and the townspeople, an essence that Renwick recaptured by establishing St. Patrick’s as the center of the city through its vertical scale, with spires rising 330 ft. from the street view. Politically reinforcing the ascendance of religious tolerance and freedom, the initial structure expanded in 1906 with the addition of the Lady Chapel, the Rectory, and the Cardinal Residence as designed by Charles T. Matthews. Allowing a sense of separation between the sacred and the mundane, massive flying buttresses alternate along the side walls with pointed windows to let light flow the uppermost level of the cathedral. Indicating the path to the heavens and thus redemption, large pointed arches surround most of the windows and entrances to the cathedral. The separation between the sacred and the divine is further shown by the wide platform which supports the cathedral structurally and separates it from the