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Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis 

The years since the Cathedral parish began its second century in 1996 have been marked by many changes and honors for the building St. Louisans still call the New Cathedral.  The building has been designated a basilica, the symbols of which are now displayed to the right and left of the chancel: the ombrellino, a red and yellow umbrella, and the tintinnabulum, a small bell on a tall ornamental staff.  Cardinal Carberry died in 1998, and his galero, the broadbrimmed silk hat, has joined those of Cardinal Glennon (died 1946) and Cardinal Ritter (died 1967) in the Chapel of All Souls, to the right of the nave.  Pope John Paul II visited the Cathedral in 1999, and a life-size bronze of him by Rudolph Torrini now stands to the west of the Archdiocesan offices in the middle of this block.  Closer to the Cathedral, another St. Louis sculptor, Wiktor Szostalo, has created a larger statue, “The Angel of Harmony.”  In 2007, then Archbishop Raymond Burke sponsored the erection of a shrine to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the west transept, designed by Duncan Stoik to feature an image created by the mosaic studio at the Vatican.  A full-scale bronze replica of the marble Pieta by Michelangelo in St. Peter’s has found a temporary home in the side antechamber behind the pulpit.

The construction of the New Cathedral, for which ground was broken on May 1, 1907, marked the success of a long campaign to move the bishop’s seat (or cathedra) away from the Old Cathedral, whose neighborhood at 3rd and Walnut had become a grimy industrial backwater.  The first solemn mass at the high altar was held on November 2, 1916.  The architects, Barnett, Haynes and Barnett, were best known for their lavish Beaux Arts designs such as the gates of Kingsbury Place.  Here their French Romanesque exterior, with its green-tiled dome standing high on a drum, disguises the shape and style of the Byzantine interior, which has three shallower domes resting on pendentives.  The gray granite exterior remains unfinished, with protruding rough stones still waiting to be carved into capitals and other ornamental details.

The interior of the church is reminiscent of San Marco in Venice, with similar marble-covered walls and mosaic vaults, but here the transepts have round ends below semi-domes.  The mosaics, designed by many artists over seventy years, constitute a textbook of religious iconography.  Those above the nave highlight local and national church history, including St. Philippine Duchesne in one of the pendentives and the racial integration of the parochial school system over the east aisle.  The crossing dome has as its theme the heavenly Jerusalem.  The dome over the altar depicts the apostles.  George D. Barnett designed the domed baldacchino or canopy over the high altar and the striking mosaics of the angelic choir on the surrounding arcades.  He also designed the predominantly red northeast chapel, dedicated to the Blessed Sacrament and executed in 1916-17 by the Gorham Company.  The two west chapels, designed in 1912 in the style of 13th-century Italy by Aristide Leonori for Tiffany, use the opalescent or milky glass for which the company was known to create the mosaic tesserae, along with the clear Venetian glass pieces used elsewhere in the Cathedral.  The southeast chapel of All Souls was completed in 1929 by the Ravenna Mosaic Company.  Note the non-figurative ceiling mosaic in the adjacent aisle.

The Chorus has often sung at the Cathedral Basilica during the winter season.  See the photo of the Chamber Chorus taken at the Cathedral in February of 2002.