The first Catholic parish church in New York City was
St. Peter's on Barclay Street, the cornerstone of which was laid in 1785. By the early 19th century,
Anthony Kohlmann, the
Jesuit rector of that church, realized that the city's growing Catholic population needed both a second sanctuary and a cathedral for the first bishop, since the city had been made a
see in 1808. The site he selected for the new church was being used as a cemetery for St. Peter's, construction on which was ongoing when the cornerstone of St. Patrick's was laid on June 8, 1809. Construction took just under six years, with the sanctuary being dedicated on May 14, 1815. In that same year,
John Connolly, an Irish
Dominican friar, arrived to take office as the city's first resident
bishop. When complete, the church was the largest in the city. Its outer dimensions are 120 by 80 feet, and the inner vault is 85 feet high (37m x 24m x 26m). Until 1830 the cathedral was the ending place of New York's annual
St. Patrick's Day parade. After that, it ended further south along Mott Street at the
Church of the Transfiguration, whose pastor,
Felix Varela, was a
Spanish political refugee from Cuba. In New York, he served as the chaplain off the Hibernian Universal Benevolent Society. Eventually, the parade moved uptown to pass in front of the new St. Patrick's Cathedral (1879). In 1836, the original cathedral was the subject of an attempted
sack after tensions between Irish Catholics and
anti-catholic Know-Nothing nativists led to a number of riots and other physical confrontations. The situation worsened when a brain-injured young woman,
Maria Monk, wrote a book telling her "true" story – a Protestant girl who converted to Catholicism, and was then allegedly forced by nuns to have sex with priests, with the resulting children being baptized then killed horribly. Despite the book being debunked by a mildly anti-Catholic magazine editor, nativist anger at the story resulted in a decision to attack the cathedral. On October 13, 1859, the cathedral was the venue for the lavish wedding of the 55-year-old Don Esteban Santa Cruz de Oviedo, an immensely wealthy Cuban landowner and slave-owner, to the 18-year-old socialite, Frances Amelia Bartlett, daughter of
Washington Allon Bartlett, the family of whom was residing on 14th Street. The marriage was heralded by the press as "The Diamond Wedding," after the luxurious preparations were revealed, including opulent gifts of jewelry by the groom. It also sparked public debate and mockery over the issue of May–December unions. On October 7, 1866, the cathedral was gutted by a fire that spread from a nearby shop. Even though the new St. Patrick's was already under construction, the old cathedral was restored under the direction of architect
Henry Engelbert. The first Mass was celebrated in the rebuilt cathedral on April 1, 1867. The new Old Cathedral was reopened in 1868. Since the current St. Patrick's Cathedral opened in 1879, St. Patrick's Old Cathedral has been a parish church, the pastor residing in the old Bishop's House at 263 Mulberry Street. Today's multi-ethnic parish includes the territory of the former Most Holy Crucifix Parish, whose church for a time was the nearby
Chapel of San Lorenzo Ruiz and housed the Filipino Catholic Apostolate for the
Archdiocese of New York. ==Cathedral complex==