St. Joseph's Cathedral - Table of Contents

History - St. Joseph's RC Cathedral
AKA St. Joseph's RC Old Cathedral
50 Franklin St., Buffalo, NY

St. Joseph RC Cathedral - Official Website
Visitor Information: (716) 854-5855

Erected:

1851-1855
Tower:
1862
Parish House:
1875

Architect:

Patrick Keely

Style:

Gothic Revival

Renovated:

1976- 1977, Trautman Associates

Status:




Bishop John Timon ............................................Patrick C. Keely

Reprint
Bishop Timon and St. Joseph's Cathedral
  Second Looks: A Pictorial History of Buffalo and Erie County, by Scott Eberle and Joseph A. Grande. Donning Co., 1993

On April 23, 1847, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo was established, and John Timon was appointed its first bishop.

Born in a log cabin in Pennsylvania in 1797, he had spent most of his Priestly life as a missionary up and down the Mississippi Valley, in the American heartland.

He arrived in Buffalo in October 1847, to assume office as leader of the forty-six hundred Roman Catholics in his twenty-county diocese, most of them concentrated around Buffalo.

In the entire diocese, he found only four schools, sixteen priests, and sixteen churches, many of them mere huts or shanties. He began by visiting all parts of the diocese, holding services in barns, halls, homes, or courthouses where necessary.

He established a seminary to train priests and brought the Sisters of Charity to to the diocese where they founded the first hospital in Buffalo in 1848. Other religious orders soon followed to establish schools, orphanages, and homes for the elderly.

To raise money to build a cathedral, he went to Europe, where he received a donation of two thousand dollars from Pope Pius IX. Other funds were given by such prominent non-Catholics as President Millard Fillmore, with whom Timon lunched in the White House on several occasions.

When Timon died in 1867, he passed on to his successors Joseph's Cathedral, a fitting bishop's church in a growing diocese now inhabited by tens of thousands of Roman Catholics.

Reprint
Bishop Timon and Immigrant Catholics in Buffalo

"High Hopes: The Rise and Decline of Buffalo, New York." by Mark Goldman

[In 1847] Pope Pius IX had created the diocese of Western New York and had appointed John Timon of Pennsylvania as the first bishop of Buffalo.

Proud of his Irish ancestry (he boasted that he was "born in Pennsylvania, conceived in Ireland"), he "accepted with joy," he said, his mission of "planting the flag of the faith in the very center of infidelity and Protestantism, and in spite of the opposition of the anti-Catholic bigots." It was only natural that the new bishop, boastful of his Irish ancestry, flaunting an Irish lilt in his voice, and eager to speak Gaelic to anyone who would listen, was enthusiastically received by the city's beleaguered Irish population. CONTINUED

Reprint
Bishop Timon Arrives in Buffalo
  Buffalo: Lake City in Niagara Land, by Richard C. Brown and Bob Watson. USA: Windsor Publications, 1981

On April 23, 1847, the Pope saw fit to create the Diocese of Buffalo. later that year, the Right reverend John Timon arrived in town as the first bishop of the new diocese.

Torches, hoisted aloft by the faithful, glowed in the night as the new bishop arrived by train. A coach drawn by four white horses hauled him away for services at St. Louis Church, where he celebrated his first mass the following Sunday morning. St. Louis, whose parishioners were predominately German, was the first catholic church in Buffalo, having opened as the Lamb of God in 1832.

The new bishop, an affable Irishman, found the Germanic environment a little too confining and, as s soon as he could discreetly do so, showed his preference for the friendlier St. Patrick's at Broadway and Ellicott, the first Irish Catholic church in Buffalo.

Within five years, Bishop Timon was breaking ground for a new St. Joseph's Cathedral in Buffalo.

Reprint
St. Joseph's Cathedral
"The Cathedral of St. Joseph, Buffalo, New York" pamphlet

When the first bishop of Buffalo, John Timon, came to Western New York in 1847, Catholics made-up less than 30% of the city's population, worshiping n small congregations scattered across the city and outlying towns.

Timon traveled abroad. seeking and receiving financial assistance and gifts-in-kind from Pope Pius IX, European kings. and the religious faithful of many countries, including Mexico. Millard Fillmore, future president of the United States, also supported the endeavor financially.

Four years passed from the groundbreaking for the cathedral in 1851 to its dedication in 1855, when more than 3,000 people gathered here in the midst of a torrential rainstorm (after a powerful storm destroyed several homes in the city in 1853, Bishop Timon ordered tents to be pitched inside the unfinished church so that families left homeless could take shelter here until their new homes were built).

During construction of the cathedral, a stone mason was killed when he fell 70 feet from the scaffolding. On another occasion, work came to a standstill when the diocesan coffers ran dry.

An accomplished linguist, Bishop Timon himself negotiated the gift of the great sanctuary windows, given by King Ludwig I of Bavaria. The windows won first prize at the Munich Exposition of 1854 in an exhibit sponsored by the king. Illustrating the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ, these were the first illustrated windows to be installed in the cathedral. Their rich and poignant imagery was especially important for the many uneducated people who came here to worship.

On the advice of Pope Pius IX, the cathedral was dedicated to St. Joseph. A statue of St. Joseph was installed above the entrance in 1862.

By 1863, the diocese had cleared its books of the$150,000 spent to build the cathedral. Free of debt, it could now be consecrated. bishop Timon presided over the ceremony, assisted by seven bishops and attended by hundreds of priests and thousands of lay people.

With its pointed arches, ribbed vaulting, and elaborate ornamentation, the cathedral reflects the character of the 13th-century Salisbury Cathedral in England, with reminiscences of French and German Gothic as well. Clearly this influence grew from Keeley's tutelage under Augustus Pugin, who restored many English Gothic churches.

Although original plans called for towers on the north and south ends of the facade, only the south tower was built, in 1862.

In 1912, a new church at the corner of Delaware Ave. and Utica was planned for designation as the cathedral for the diocese by Bishop Charles, E. Colton. Plagued by serious flaws in design and construction, the New Cathedral was finally abandoned in 1977, at which time St. Joseph's Cathedral regained its status as the bishop's church.

Reprint

The Architecture of St. Joseph's Cathedral
 
Buffalo Architecture: A Guide, by Francis R. Kowsky, et. al. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981

In contrast to Upjohn's highly picturesque and historically accurate Gothic design for St. Paul's Keeley's design for St. Joseph's represents the more symmetrical and generalized Gothic common to mid-nineteenth-century Catholic churches.

Although A. W. N. Pugin, the father of the ecclesiastical Gothic Revival and the reputed teacher of Keeley, was a Catholic convert, the Roman church never fully embraced the British Gothic Revival. More concerned with accommodating large congregations than with expressing the true principles of ecclesiology,Catholic churches like St. Joseph's had deeper affinities with Continental cathedrals than with English rural parish churches.

Especially French in the design of St. Joseph's is the facade with its twin towers (the north spire was never built), rose window, and triple portals.

Keeley, an Irish immigrant architect whose office was in Brooklyn, enjoyed a flourishing practice as a designer of Catholic churches. A number of early cathedrals in eastern cities were built from his plans, including the immense Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston (1865), for which St. Joseph's seems to have been the prototype.




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