Why St. Patrick’s Cathedral was ablaze with spectacular light in 1912
On a cold January night in 1912, St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue was lit up like never before.
More than 50,000 electric globes strung from the main entrances to the Cathedral’s spires illuminated the darkness, turning the Gothic house of faith into a festive blaze of light and drawing 200,000 New Yorkers to 51st Street to experience the spectacle in person.
Teams of steeple riggers holding hammers and nails attached the bulbs to the stone walls the night before, “suspended in the air in rope chairs,” as the New York Times described it, careening from one side of the Cathedral to the other every time the wind blew.
What was the occasion for this spectacular light show? It was to celebrate the return of John Murphy Farley, the popular Archbishop of New York since 1902, who was due to return from Rome on January 18, 1912 by steamship after being elevated to Cardinal.
Of course, Cardinal Farley wasn’t going to dock back in Manhattan and then cab it up to St. Patrick’s. After disembarking, he was greeted by church leaders, took part in a massive procession of carriages and cars up Broadway and Fifth Avenue. All the way he was greeted by lines of New Yorkers “whose ringing cheers gave testimony to their affection and joy,” according to the Journal of the Creggan Local History Society.
At some point before the end of January, the lights illuminating the Cathedral were turned off and removed, and Cardinal Farley resumed his regular duties at St. Patrick’s—where he’s now buried in a crypt under the alter after passing away in 1918. (Above, the Cardinal back at St. Patrick’s)
St. Patrick’s may have taken the illumination idea from the city’s huge Hudson Fulton celebration in 1909, when municipal buildings and monuments glowed in brilliant light to honor the anniversaries of Henry Hudson’s exploration of the river now named in his honor and the invention of the steamboat by Robert Fulton.
[Top image: New-York Historical Society; second image: Alamy; third image: Bain Collection/LOC]
