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New York - St. Patrick's Cathedral St. Patrick's, America's first major cathedral built in the Gothic Revival style, is the seat of the Archdiocese of the Ecclesiastical Province of New York, which includes the dioceses of Brooklyn, Buffalo, Albany, Rochester, Syracuse, and Ogdenburg. Begun in 1858, the nave was opened November 29, 1877, and the cathedral dedicated May 25, 1879. With the exception of the Lady Chapel and two smaller chapels the entire project was designed by James Renwick ( 1818-1895). The cathedral with its dependencies occupies an entire block. Although its twin spires are dwarfed by the skyscrapers of Rockefeller Center and other near-by buildings, its granite and marble mass is still impressive. The design is based upon that of the Cathedral of Cologne; the Fifth Avenue façade is composed of a steep central gable flanked by towers and traceried spires. Above the canopied central portal is a rose window, twenty-six feet in diameter. The exterior is constructed of granite. Owing to the nature of this material much of the delicacy and grace characteristic of Gothic architecture is lost in the detail of the tracery, molded profiles, and carved ornament of the exterior. A purist would be disturbed by the lack of flying buttresses where he would expect to find them; the pinnacles of the missing buttresses are present, however, though their function is a bit puzzling in view of the lack of stone vaulting inside the church. The plan of the cathedral is cruciform, with nave, transepts, and choir. The interior is reminiscent of Amiens with a forest of magnificent clustered piers of white marble separating the central aisle from the two side aisles. The unusual height of the side aisles suggests St. Ouen at Rouen, while the clustered columns, with their richly ornamented capitals, and the elaborately vaulted ceiling follow such English examples as York, Exeter, and Westminster Abbey. The triforium above the side aisles affords a continuous passage fifty-six feet above the floor, around the interior, broken only by the walls of the transepts. The entire architectural composition is unusually open and delicate, partly due to the slenderness of the nave piers, which are only five feet in diameter above the base. The interior has dignity and spaciousness, combined with religious somberness. Forty-five of the seventy stained-glass windows are from the studios of Nicholas Lorin at Chartres, and of Henry Ely at Nantes. Rich in tonesome dark, some of pastel lightness -- and combined with elaborate tracery, they glow in the sunshine, but unfortunately, much of the detail in them is too delicate to be legible at a distance. They become simply patterns of red, yellow, green, blue, and purple against the framework of the stone walls which, in the dusky light, takes on a tone of deepest gray. The nave extends east from the main portal on Fifth Avenue; at its eastern end is the glimmering High Altar. Shallow aisle chapels, on both sides of the nave, contain altars dedicated to the worship of various saints. Below the first window of the north wall is the baptistery. Its beautiful font, carved of dark wood, rests on a marble base. The adjoining chapel is dedi. cated to St. Bernard and St. Bridget. Its richly decorated background, a reproduction, in ecru-colored marble, of the doorway of St. Bernard's chapel in Mellefont, Ireland, is flanked by clustered green columns. The fourteen Stations of the Cross, around the transept walls, were designed by Peter J. H. Cuypers and carved in Holland. On the west side of the south transept is a small window dedicated to St. Patrick, the cartoon for which was drawn by Renwick. In the lower panel the architect is shown discussing the plans of the cathedral with Archbishop Hughes. The statue of St. Francis, in the north ambulatory, is a reproduction of one by Giovanni Dupré in the Church of St. Francis at Assisi. In the south ambulatory is a Pietà, by William Ordway Partridge. It resembles the famous work of Michelangelo, although differing in composition and pose. The Chapel of the Little Flower, adjoining, contains a statue of St. Theresa by Mario Korbel. In the choir itself, the High Altar, designed by Renwick, has a reredos adorned with statues of St. Patrick and other saints. Its treatment lacks the imagination of the work of later neo-Gothic architects such as Cram and Goodhue; and the white marble of which it is constructed contrasts too sharply with the mellow texture of the semicircular apse. The Archbishop's throne, on the north side of the choir, is of carved French oak, overhung by a delicate Gothic canopy, supported by columns, and crowned by a richly ornamented octagonal lantern. The white marble pulpit, on the south side, is another work of art from the hand of Renwick; from a stem of short, clustered columns, it expands cupshape and hexagonal in form, and is overhung by a petal-like canopy of chastely decorated translucent marble. Behind the apse is the Lady Chapel of white Vermont marble -- more pleasing than the granite of the cathedral proper -- and adjoining it are two smaller chapels. These were designed by Charles T. Mathews. The first mass in Lady Chapel was said on Christmas Day, 1906. The residences of the archbishop and rector are, respectively, at the northwest and southwest corners of Madison Avenue and Fiftieth Street. On the block north of the cathedral, on Madison Avenue, is a building housing Cathedral College, and other Catholic societies. On the northeast corner of Fifty-first Street and Madison Avenue is the chancery, a large stone structure. The present church is an outgrowth of the first St. Patrick's Cathedral, founded in 1809. Rebuilt after a fire in 1866, the latter still stands at Mott and Prince Streets. Its founder, the Very Reverend Anthony Kohlmann, Vicar General of the New York See, was the head of the New York Literary Institute, a Jesuit establishment on the present site of the cathedral, where later, in 1842, was erected the little Church of St. John the Evangelist. In 1852, however, the trustees of St. Patrick's Cathedral acquired the property; and razing of the smaller building was soon begun to make way for the great edifice. Once an outpost of the town, St. Patrick's is today in the crowded heart of the city; once a landmark visible for miles, its spires now are surrounded by the loftier towers of secular buildings. Nevertheless, through the years, the cathedral takes on greater significance for the large Catholic population of the metropolis. During the regularly scheduled services, the rich formality of historic Catholic ritual fills the dim spaces with music and intoned prayer, but on such occasions as the celebration of Mass on Christmas Eve and Easter, and the great parade on March 17, in honor of St. Patrick himself, the ceremonial splendor of a pageant is invoked. On other days societies organized under the cathedral's direct supervision -- Catholic organizations of every sort, many of them groups organized within secular institutions of business and the professions -- meet in tribute to the patron saint or day especially sacred to them. To grasp the magnitude of the cathedral's influence in the city, it needs only to be realized that the Roman Catholics of the archdiocese number one million.