Cathedral of the Holy Cross
- Architect
- Patrick Charles Keely
- Year
- 1875
- Style
- Gothic Revival
- City
- Boston, MA
The Cathedral of the Holy Cross is the seat of the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, dedicated in 1875 after nine years of construction, and it remains one of the largest Catholic churches in New England. Bishop John Fitzpatrick pushed for a bigger cathedral once the diocese's 1808 predecessor grew too small for Boston's swelling Catholic population, but the Civil War delayed the project until Bishop John Williams revived it in 1865, choosing a site in the South End.
the building
Site in a changing neighborhood. Williams sited the cathedral in the South End, a district originally laid out for Boston's Protestant middle class that was rapidly becoming home to the city's Irish immigrant population by the time construction began in 1866.
the style
Patrick Charles Keely designed the cathedral in the Gothic Revival style, the idiom he used across an enormous body of Catholic church commissions throughout the Northeast, giving Boston's Catholic community a building whose pointed arches and verticality echoed the medieval cathedrals of the faith's European roots.
More on Gothic Revivalthe architect
Patrick Charles Keely was one of the most prolific Catholic church architects in 19th-century America, and the Cathedral of the Holy Cross stands as one of his major Boston commissions, built for an Archdiocese whose congregation had outgrown its earlier home.
nearby
- Joshua Bates School
- Cyclorama Building
- Union Church
- Youth's Companion Building
- Armory of 1st Corps Cadets (interior)
- John Hancock Tower