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St. Joseph’s Church, Albany
Here we have another example of an altar rail traversing the the nave and transcepts. It was built in 1860 to cater for Irish immigrants building the Eirie canal.
St Joseph’s, Albany, New York
Patrick Charles Keely
The interior, except ro the magnificent hammerbeam roof has been stripped and the church has just about escaped demolition.
Does anybody know what is going on at Ushaw College? The pictures do not give us much hope to think that E. W. Pugin – or anyone else for that matter – is, as they say nowadays, cherished.
The Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Boston
Patrick Keely
Patrick Charles Keely was born in Thurles, County Tipperary, Ireland, on August 9, 1816, the son of a builder who had moved to Thurles from Mlkenny to construct St. Patrick’s College. After its completion in 1837, the elder Keely acted as both architect and builder for the Fever Hospital, finished in 1840. What training in architectural design young Patrick received is unknown, but it is likely that he learned construction from his father.
At age 25 he sailed for America, settling in Brooklyn where he took up the carpentry trade. Among his first designs were altars at the Seminary at Lafargeville and in St. James’ Pro-cathedral in Brooklyn, for which he acted as superintendent of construction as well. In due course, a young priest of his acquaintance, Father Sylvester Malone, contacted Keely regarding a new church he planned to build in the Williamsburgh section of Brooklyn. Together they worked out a plan from which Keely developed a Gothic design. Its dedication in 1846 opened a new era in Catholic building, and Keely was besieged with requests for designs of churches and other buildings to serve the rapidly increasing immigrant population.
In 1849, a scant three years after completing his first church, Keely was called upon to design the Cathedral at Albany for Bishop McClusky, who was to become the first American cardinal. This was the first of 20 cathedrals for which he received commissions, including those in Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo, Hartford, Newark, Providence, and, of course, Boston. His total output of churches is said to total more than 600, plus a number of institutional buildings, Virtually all of which were religiously oriented. The geographical distribution of Keely’s work ranged from Charleston, South Carolina to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and as far west as Iowa.
Keely’s work in Boston may have begun as early as 1851, with the rebuilding and enlarging of the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in South Boston. This granite Gothic Revival structure was designed by Gridley J.F. Bryant in 1843, completed in 1845 and burned in 1848. Its rebuilding was completed in 1853. Keely’s first complete church in Boston was St. James on Albany Street (1853-55), followed by Most Holy Redeemer in East Boston (1854-57), Notre Dame Academy in Roxbury (1855-71), Church of the Immaculate Conception in the South End (1866-61), St. Francis de Sales in Charlestown (1859-62), Cathedral of the Holy Cross in the South End (1861-75), St. Francis de Sales in Roxbury (1867-69), Our Lady of the Assumption in East Boston (1869-73), St. Thomas Aquinas in Jamaica Plain (1869-73), St. Augustine in South Boston (1870-74), Holy Trinity in the South End (1871-77), St. Vincent de Paul in South Boston (1872-74), St. James the Greater in Chinatown (1873-75), St. Peter in Dorchester (1873-84), St. Mary in the North End (1875-77), Our Lady of Victory (?) (1877), St. Joseph’s Church interior in Roxbury (1883), St. Peter’s rectory (ca. 1885), and St. Mary in Charlestown (1887-92). The successor firm of Keely and Houghton designed St. Margaret’s Church in Dorchester (1899-1904) and St. Mary’s School in Charlestown (1901-02).O’Connell is correct in traacing the origin of the altar rail to the cancelli of the Roman Basilicas. However, altar rails, in Catholic Churches since the Council of Trent (1547-1562) have a dual purpose: that of providing a convenient place to receive Holy Communion, and the original purpose of hierarchially demarkating the Chancel (reserved for the Sacred Ministers) from the nave. This latter purpose is still shared by the Latin western Church and all of the Oriental Churches of whatever Rite (Byzantines, Melchites, Copts, Malancharese, Malabarese etc.). The positioning of altar rails in churches is still recommended in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, third edition, published in 2000.
The immediate origin of the distincion between nave and chancel is to be found in the Christian Basilicas of the 4th. century. These were the first Christian Churhes and took as the model for the distinction the “Cancelli” or rails that divided the law courts from the rest of the Roman pagan basilica. In the pagan Basilica, the notary of the courts sat at the gate of the rails and received the pleas to be passed on to the magistrates who sat in judgment behind the Cancelli, in the apsis of the pagan basilica. This official became known as the “chancellarius” which is the origin of the medieval and modern political office of chancellor.
When Christianity was legalized in the Roman empire and began to build its first churches, to mark the theological distinctions between the clergy and laity, the model of the cancelli of the pagan basilica was taken over. It haoever, was used to express a distinction already used in the first house churches of Rome. It is likely that the hierarchical distinction traces its origin to the Temple in Jerusalem – about which we read in the Books of Exodus, Deutoronomy and Leviticus in the Old Testament. The influence of these texts on church building can be seen for example in the dimensions of the SIxtine Chapel in Rome and in the Papal Chapel at Avignon which reproduce the dimensions of the Temple in Jerusalem.
In the Middle ages, the cancelli developed in the Western Church into the famous Rood Screens which carried figures of the Cross and of Our Lady and St. John. They also had galleries from which antiphons and readings were sung or read (e.g. the French term “jubé” coming from the liturgical expression “Jube Domine benedicere” which is asked by the deacon of the priest before he preaches the Gospel).. The rood screen was provided practoically to every christian church. Eamonn Duffy gives an interesting account of their destruction in England during the Reformation in his book “The Stripping of the Altars”. The Council of Trent decreed that the Rood screens should be simplified to a less elaborate structure over which the altar was visible – hence the modern altar rail to which was added the function of receiving Holy Communion. Perviously, the communicants received Holy Communion at the gate of the Rood Screen, a hausling cloth being held by two clerics. All of these elements were passed over to the new altar rails which must be regarded as a continuation of the Rood screen.
In the Eastern Churches, the original cancelli developed into the iconostasis. On the gates of the sanctuary, icons were exposed. These further developed into the elaborate structures we know to-day which completely screen all sight of the altar and which cut access to the altar for all but those clergy destined for its service. This was unaffected by Trent and continues. It is the Eastern counterpart of the altar rail and of the medieval western Rood Screen.
St. James’ , Spanish Place, London
Edward Goldie (1890)
Length of Church 195 ft; Width of Church 92 ft; Height of Church 67 ft; Seating capacity 2,000
An interesting feature of Goldie’s church is the altar rail which spans the nave and both transcepts – just as at Cobh, although in the Spanish Place church the communion passage behind the rail is gated at the Chancel.
St Patrick’s Cathedral, New York
The ground plan of St. Patrick’s showing the altar rail traversing the nave and both transcepts, as in Cobh.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York
James Renwick (1853-1889)
# 605 has the picture from 1912 which I suspect was taken by Fr. Francis Brown, SJ
There is another coulured one taken recently with the timber thing remooved. It ois in the thread so I shall have a look to wsee where.
Re the Immaculate Conception, Denver try this link
Graham,
this is a piece of plywood placed in the sanctuary in the 1970s. In a sense, it is the root of all evils in Cobh. Nobody wants it and everybody agrees that something better is needed. Few, however, think that in replacing it the whole floor should be dug uot and atomized – just as Professor O’Neill did with Peter Turnerelli’s High ALtar in the Pro- Cathedral.
The following illustrate how the an altar is view by Russian Orthodox Christians
The Iconostasis of the Chapel of the Glorious Resurrection, Moscow
The Cathedral of the Annunciation, Moscow
The Rila Monastery in Bulgaria
The Nicolai Cathedral, St. Petersburg
St Peter and St Paul, St. Petersburg
St. Julien-le-Pauvre, Paris
This picture of the interior of St. Julien-le-Pauvre in Paris shows the liturgical dispositions used by the Greek Melkites. Clearly, there is not much room here for “communal” worship but it does not seem to bother anyone that the altar is not only in the Chancel but completely invisible to the congregation except for those occasions during the Mass when the doors are opened.
Franz Christian Gau
Architect and archæologist, b. at Cologne, 15 June, 1790; d. at Paris, January, 1854. In 1809 he entered the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and in 1815 visited Italy and Sicily. In 1817 he went to Nubia, and while there he made drawings and measurements of all the more important monuments of that country, his ambition being to produce a work which should supplement the great work of the French expedition in Egypt. The result of his labours appeared in a folio volume (Stuttgart and Paris, 1822), entitled “Antiquitiés de la Nubie ou monuments inédits des bords du Nil, situés entre la premiére et la seconde cataracte, dessinés et mesurés in 1819”. It consists of sixty-eight plates, of plans, sections, and views, and has been received as an authority. His next publication was the completion of Mazois’s work on the ruins of Pompeii. In 1825 Gau was naturalized as a French citizen, and later became architect to the city of Paris. He directed the restoration of the churches of Sain-Julien-le-Pauvre, and Saint-Séverin, and built the great prison of La Roquette, etc. With his name also is associated the revival of Gothic architecture in Paris — he having designed and commenced, in 1846, the erection of the church of Sainte-Clotilde, the first modern church erected in the capital in that style. Illness compelled him to relinquish the care of supervising the work, and he died before its completion
(Catholic Encyclopedia)
