The History of Old Saint Mary's Cathedral, Part 1

Old Saint Mary's, Past and Present | History of Old Saint Mary's, Part 2

From the day of its dedication in 1854 to the present, Old St. Mary's witnessed and participated in the growth of a fascinating city.

During the past century, Old St. Mary's has never stopped reaching out to the community as a force for unity, reconciliation and spiritual peace. As conditions and circumstances in the parish have changed, the church has responded to them. Its survival and continuing ministry are living testimony to the vital power of love in Christ. The Paulist Fathers, the first religious community for men founded in this country, assumed responsibility for the church in 1894. Old St. Mary's has provided many opportunities to fulfill their mission of responding to the needs of the times.

The Early Days of San Francisco

San Francisco in 1854 was a town in transition. Fewer than eighty years earlier, the first permanent settlement, compromised of forty Spanish families, a few soldiers, and three Franciscan Fathers, had been founded on the San Francisco Peninsula.

In the mid-1830's, around the same time that Mexico's Secularization Act put an end to the mission system, Yankee whaling ships returning from the Pacific grounds began arriving in a cove at the west side of San Francisco Bay. Named Yerba Buena Cove after a fragrant shrub native to the area, the cove became a popular place for the ships to replenish their supplies of wood and water before returning home around Cape Horn.

The Gold Rush

On January 30, 1847, the village of Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco, population 469. Almost a year to the day later, gold was discovered on the American River. Six years later, 40,000 people called San Francisco Home.

By 1849, buildings quickly went up in San Francisco. Some structures were built well, while others were slapped together almost over night to take advantage of the boom. As eager "Forty-niners" kept pouring in, the town was soon overwhelmed. Within three years, six large fires destroyed millions of dollars worth of property and displaced many families, sending them to the streets.

In 1853, after heavy winter rains turned the public thoroughfares into swamps, the busiest main streets were covered with wood planks. Later that same year, fire destroyed not only buildings, but the expensive planked streets as well.

Warehouses, shops, hotels, and saloons clustered along the waterfront streets did a brisk business. A distance uphill from the water was the city's hub, Portsmouth Square, and around its perimeter stood some of San Francisco's most attractive buildings. Opposite the Square stood the Jenny Lind Theater, a popular entertainment spot, which the city purchased and turned into City Hall. Next door to the Jenny Lind was the El Dorado, a well-known gambling hall.

People came from all over the world to settle in San Francisco. A Chinese enclave was ensconced on Dupont Street, soon to be known as the heart of Chinatown. A number of black families settled in San Francisco, some fugitives from slavery, some freed. The French, the Italians, and the Latin Americans also staked out their neighborhoods.

By 1854, many of the gold strikes were unsuccessful and San Francisco went from boom to bust. Goods gathered dust on shelves, bills went unpaid, businesses went bankrupt, unemployment rose and the city's first depression set in.

The tens of thousands of people who lived in San Francisco had become a population of stunning diversity that had already shown itself to be as prone to turbulence as the ground upon which the city was built.

San Francisco had grown rapidly and the need for assistance and community services developed faster than the ability to provide them. There were honest attempts made at municipal improvement. Not long after the first disastrous fires, a number of volunteer fire companies formed. Strenuous efforts were made to improve sanitary conditions in streets. Various ethnic and religious benevolent groups sponsored hospitals.

Wanting to provide an alternative to the entertainment of the town as well as preserve and pass on their beliefs, churches, temples, and synagogues created centers of education, social and civic activity. A few of them founded missions to evangelize. Some of the evangelizers went so far as to appeal publicly for social justice and lobby for reform of abuses.

Archbishop Alemany

For Catholics in San Francisco, there were three churches: St. Francis of Assisi, St. Patrick and the old Mission Dolores Church, which was located far from the center of town. These churches answered to the distant Mexican diocese. Then in 1850, the same year in which California entered the Union, San Francisco became part of the newly formed Monterey Diocese.

Given charge of the diocese was newly consecrated Bishop Joseph Sadoc Alemany, a 36 year old Spanish member of the Dominican Order born in Vich, Spain.

Old Saint Mary's during construction. 1854

A quiet, scholarly man, fluent in French and English as well as his native tongue , Alemany arrived in Monterey on February 4, 1851 and began a survey of his diocese. By 1853, it was determined that San Francisco would be his headquarters and he became the first Archbishop of San Francisco that year. The See included all of California from San Jose to the Oregon border and all the territory north of the Colorado River and west of the Rockies. There were 50,000 Catholics in the new archdiocese with 22 priests and 25 churches to serve them.

Old Saint Mary's in the 1860s.

California's First Cathedral

Alemany immediately began to plan a cathedral to be built on the lot donated by John Sullivan, who had emigrated from Ireland to California in 1844 and prospered. The lot was on the northeast corner of the intersection of California Street and Dupont (later Grant Avenue).

The cornerstone for the cathedral was laid on July 17, 1853. Although the local economy was no longer expanding, donations to complete construction came from many groups, including Catholics, Protestants, and Jews.

The design was undertaken by architects William Craine and Thomas England, who designed the cathedral to resemble a Gothic church in Alemany's hometown in Spain. The new cathedral had parapets on either flank, surmounted with embrasures, and buttresses finished cut-stone pinnacles. Inside, a vaulted ceiling with groin arches rose above a Carrara marble altar imported from Rome. The original plan included a steeple, but the chance of an earthquake toppling it into the street changed the plans, leaving only a bell tower.

Early interior view of Old Saint Mary's

The materials used to build San Francisco's first cathedral came from both East and West, as later did its parishioners. Granite was used around the base of the structure to deflect rainwater and for other trim. It was quarried in China and brought across the Pacific in Precut blocks. Bricks minted in New England for the outer walls came around Cape Horn as ship ballast. Locally quarried sandstone was use for the foundation, the clock trim and the main entrance. Lumber for beams, floors and other interior work, was also obtained locally.

At Christmas Midnight Mass in 1854, the cathedral was dedicated. The workers who were wrapping up the details had left the building only three hours earlier. There were parts still unfinished, but the building was ready enough for use.