The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception is a Catholic church near the Mansion District in Albany, New York in the United States. Built in the period of the 1848–1852, it is the mother church of the Diocese of Albany. In 1976 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Designed by Irish American architect Patrick Keely to accommodate Albany's growing population of Catholic immigrants, Immaculate Conceptions is the second-oldest cathedral in the state, after St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. It is also the third oldest Catholic cathedral in the United States, and the first American Catholic cathedral in the Neo-Gothic architectural style.. See embedded audio file, 0:20–0:24.
The cathedral interior features the original stained glass windows, imported from England, and award-winning Stations of the Cross statuary. When completed, Immaculate Conception was the tallest building in Albany. It has hosted visits by cardinals and leaders of other faiths, including an archbishop of Canterbury, and the weddings of two Catholic governors' daughters. In 1986, Immaculate Conception hosted the first-ever service of forgiveness between Catholics and Jews on Palm Sunday, an event commemorated by a sculpture outside the building.
The construction of Immaculate Conception took four years. The south tower was not consecrated until 1902. The construction of Empire State Plaza,threatened the cathedral in the 1960s when it required the demolition of most of the surrounding neighborhood. Immaculate Conception has been through several renovations in its history, including a $30 million restoration in the early 21st century.
Location
Immaculate Conception Cathedral is located in a one-acre () lot on the southwest corner of Eagle Street and Madison Avenue (U.S. Route 20). The terrain slopes gently westward from the Hudson River roughly three-quarters of a mile (1.1 km) to the east. The cathedral is located just outside the Mansion Historic District Bleecker Park; beyond it are rowhouses that contribute to that district.The cathedral neighborhood consists of large state-government buildings.
To its south, a parking lot separates the cathedral and the governor's mansion. The remaining nearby buildings reflect a more modernist late 20th-century style. On the west, past a plaza with a small fountain, is the large building that houses the New York State Museum, library and archives. The Erastus Corning Tower, the centerpiece of Empire State Plaza, rises to the north behind a high retaining wall. East of the cathedral is a parking garage.
Cathedral exterior
Construction. An iron railing along both sidewalks sets off the church building. The brick walls are faced in sandstone. Slate shingles cover the gabled rolled lead roof.Four more buttresses rise two stories to the roof along the sides of the nave, setting apart Gothic tracery windows. These buttresses are topped with crocketed pinnacles at the castellated roofline. The circular chancel offsets the rectilinearity of the rest of the church.
Facades The East (front) facade has three portals with crocketed gables, divided by four miniature buttresses with crocketed pinnacles. Two larger buttresses, similarly treated, rise to roof level on either side. A large Gothic tracery window is above them, topped by a small recessed quatrefoil window in the gable apex. A pierced tracery parapet is mounted at the roofline. Small arched tracery windows appear in the facade's flanks.
Bell towers Two bell towers flank the main entrance of the cathedral. At their base, the north and south towers are supported by double-angled buttresses on their corners. The bell towers are topped with crocketed pinnacles three stories above.
The first two stories of the bell towers have paired windows, topped by a small quatrefoil under a pointed dripstone. At the third story, this pattern changes to double windows under cusped arches, topped by a crocketed ogee arch, above which is a line of plain corbels. The fourth story windows, surrounding the belfry, consist of three narrow louvered arches with a cusped dripstone and gable.
On the north tower, the top half-story is faced on all sides with a clock. A sexfoil window occupies the same position on the south tower. Each tower is topped by a spire, rising from a castellated base. The towers are pierced by small narrow gabled dormers just above the base. Rows of vertical crocketing decorate the section lines.
Cathedral interior Immaculate Conception Cathedral is shaped like a Latin cross, with two side aisles, a clerestory and a circular chancel at the west (rear) end. The transept is two bays long.
Vestibule
The main doors of the cathedral open into a full-width vestibule with a flat-beamed ceiling. From the vestibule, doorways lead to the two bell towers and the three aisles of the sanctuary. A baptismal font of white Caen stone sits at the front of the vestibule.Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception,
Ceiling The vaulted cathedral ceiling is supported by clustered engaged columns with heavy capitals. The columns are decorated with organic motifs that include carvings of grapes and grape leaves, a particularly Romanesque touch. Heavy bosses connect the ceiling vaults and light fixtures are attached to the walls between the arches.
Nave The cathedral nave is five bays long. It has vaults dividing its four sections, with secondary ribs and extensive bossing. Walnut pews sit on a marble patterned floor. The Stations of the Cross are small sculptures lining the perimeter of the nave. Between the stations are the stained glass windows, original to the building.The stained glass windows in the nave were manufactured in Birmingham, England.
Chancel The chancel sits in the rear of the nave and is divided into seven sections.Each section is separated by a single column with a small capital. Each column has a recessed arched panel holding a statue of a saint. The chancel walls have lancet windows with stained glass. The bishop's cathedra is located on the south side of the chancel.The main altar sits on a raised concrete platform in the chancel. The west wall of the chancel contains the Lady window, a 14th-century style stained glass work depicting the life of the Virgin Mary. It was designed by H.W. Ackroyd of Sheffield, England and built by William Wailes of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England.
History
Immaculate Conception Cathedral was built as much for social reasons as the practical needs of the church in an area where its presence had previously been minimal. It took the latter half of the 19th century to complete, and was only consecrated on its 50th anniversary. The building suffered from deferred maintenance during the middle of the 20th century, requiring an extensive renovation in the early 21st century.
1796 – 1847: Catholicism comes to Albany
By the end of the American Revolution in 1781, the tiny Catholic population in the new State of New York was concentrated in New York City. It was served by St. Peter's Parish, erected in 1786 as the only parish in the state. When Pope Pius VI erected the Diocese of Baltimore in 1789, the entire United States was put under its jurisdiction.St. Mary's Parish, erected in downtown Albany in 1796, became the second parish in the state and the only one in Upstate New York.
In 1808, the Vatican erected the Diocese of New York, covering all of New York State and part of New Jersey. Nine years later, in 1817 Irish immigrants began migrating to Albany to build the Erie Canal across the state. Businesses established themselves at the eastern terminus of the canal in Albany attracting even more immigrants to the region. Catholic immigrants began settling in Albany, the Capital District and the Mohawk Valley. These Catholics established new parishes in their communities.
Immigration from Ireland to the United States surged during the 1840s, due to the extreme privations of the Great Famine in that country. By 1847, the Catholic Church was well established and growing in Albany and other cities in the region. At the request of the Catholic hierarchy, Pope Pius IX erected the Diocese of Albany. John McCloskey, later archbishop of New York, was installed as the first bishop of Albany in 1847, with St. Mary's designated as his pro-cathedral.
Like other churches in the new diocese, St. Mary's was operated by a board of trustees who exercised a great deal of autonomy due to Albany's distance from the bishop in New York City. When McCloskey became bishop, he clashed with the board over its poor financial management, which had left the parish deep;y in debt. "What should belong to the present and the future is already mortgaged to the past!" complained McCloskey's superior, John Hughes, archbishop of New York. Before he had taken up his position in Albany, McCloskey had warned that "sooner or later, the trustee system as it exists will destroy or be destroyed by the Catholic religion."
1848 – 1852: Construction of cathedral
As the new bishop of Albany, McCloskey needed a new cathedral; St. Mary's was too small to serve that need. In addition, he wanted a more impressive building that would assert the place of Irish Catholic immigrants in the diocese. During the 1840s, Irish and German Catholic immigrants across the country had been subjected to a nativist backlash by many Protestants, championed by the Know-Nothing Party. Nativist riots in other American cities had seen the killing of Catholics and the destruction of Catholic churches and other property.
At his first retreat with the priests of the diocese, McCloskey persuaded them to pledge over $5,000 to start the building fund for the new cathedral. He commissioned the architect Patrick Keely, an Irish immigrant himself, to design the cathedral. Keely was not a design pioneer, but he followed his era's architectural trends closely. He was closely influenced by the ideas of British architect Augustus Pugin, as epitomized in Pugin's book True Principles. Kelley also admired St George the Martyr Southwark, an Anglican church in London designed by Pugin in 1841.
While Keely was living in Brooklyn, two new Episcopal churches were built in Manhattan employing the Gothic Revival style; Trinity Church, designed by Richard Upjohn, and Grace Church, designed by James Renwick. Renwick had also built Calvary Church in Manhattan. For the cathedral in Albany, Keely may have been influenced by the walls of Grace and Trinity Churches and the twin-bell tower facade of Calvary Church.
In 1848, McCloskey and Hughes laid the cornerstone for Immaculate Conception Cathedral. While the cathedral was being built, McCloskey traveled within the United States and to Europe raise funds for the project. He solicited donations from the Leopoldine Society in Austria-Hungary and the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in France. To save time and money on the cathedral construction, McCloskey decided to use plaster and lath painted to look like stone on the interior dome. Most of the construction workers were immigrants; many of them volunteered their labor to the project. The final construction cost for the project was $250,000 ($ in modern dollars). Hughes and McCloskey dedicated Immaculate Conception Cathedral in 1852.