Architecture
In 1890, construction began one "what would become the largest Catholic Church in Michigan." Spier and Rohns designed the present cathedral structure. Father Dominic Hippolytus Kolasiñski had formed the parish and raised the building funds for the rapidly growing parish. The cornerstone-laying ceremony was held on June 5, 1892, and on December 24, 1893, after construction costs of over $125,000, the church was officially dedicated. More than 10,000 people attended the dedication ceremony.
Sweetest Heart of Mary is one of the largest and perhaps most impressive Gothic Revival Cathedral Churches in the Midwest. The church is constructed of red brick in a cruciform shape with a cross gabled roof The facade on Russell boasts a rusticated stone lower level with a triple portal, a pointed arch structure, and a stone balustrade atop everything. Two towers flank the entrance, topped with identical Spires, which are capped with buttresses and detailed with crosses.
The church includes several impressive stained glass windows built by Detroit Stained Glass Works, the successor to the well known firm of Friederichs and Staffin. The major transept window illustrates the Holy Family in Saint Joseph's workshop. Eight windows lining the nave portray Christ, Mary and several saints; this set of windows won a major prize at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
There are three related building—large rectory, a convent that could house several dozen nuns and a large school building—which make up a local historic district.
The 1893 Austin Pipe organ Opus No. 2 (2 manuals and 20 ranks) is the oldest Austin Organ still in service, and the oldest surviving electro-pneumatic in the state of Michigan.
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Famous quotes containing the word architecture:
“Defaced ruins of architecture and statuary, like the wrinkles of decrepitude of a once beautiful woman, only make one regret that one did not see them when they were enchanting.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)