St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York

In 1853, the American architect James Renwick, Jr., with his firm’s partner William Rodrigue, was commissioned to design New York City’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral to replace the Archdiocese’s earlier, smaller building in lower Manhattan. Construction started in 1858 on what was then a less populated site north of the city’s main residential and business areas. During the American Civil War in the 1860s, construction stopped. After construction resumed in 1865, the completed cathedral opened in May 1879--a stunning structure clad in marble, albeit without spires due to a lack of funding. Stylistically, it incorporated German, French and English Gothic elements.

This print, created shortly after the towering spires were completed in 1888, shows St. Patrick’s Cathedral as viewed from across the street at the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue. A cluster of people stand on the entry steps. On the street at lower left, there are two horse-drawn carriages; at the lower right, three pedestrians are on the sidewalk opposite the Cathedral's grand three-entry facade. Beneath the scene (in the bottom margin at lower left), the artist Max Rosenthal, created a small bust portrait of Renwick (called a "remarque") as a tribute to the architect of this monumental building.

Today, sited between Fifth and Madison Avenues and East 51st and East 50th Streets in midtown Manhattan (it stands across from Rockefeller Center), St. Patrick’s Cathedral ranks among Renwick’s finest buildings. It is the largest Gothic Revival Catholic cathedral in North America.