Amid the winds of Providence

/in

Stephen Enzweiler

Cathedral Historian

This is the third in a four-part series celebrating the Quasquicentennial (125th) anniversary of the Dedication of St. Mary’s Cathedral (Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption) on January 27, 1901.

On April 8, 1890, a man named James Walsh, Sr. (1818-1890), former resident of Covington, retired owner of James Walsh & Company, distiller of whiskey, wealthy citizen and philanthropist, supporter of Catholic charities and institutions across Northern Kentucky, and lifelong parishioner of St. Mary’s Cathedral, died suddenly from a fatal stroke at his residence in Washington, D.C. An emigrant from Ireland, Walsh had lived in Covington and Newport since 1848, entering the employ of a distillery business and rising to become a partner in 1867. At the time of his death, he was one of the wealthiest men in America and head of the largest producer of whiskey, with a massive distillery headquartered on the Ohio River at Covington and with a second distillery at Lawrenceburg. In his Last Will and Testament, he left bequests in large amounts to 10 Catholic beneficiaries, including “the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars” to the Rt. Rev. Camillus Paul Maes, “for use and benefit of a new St. Mary’s Cathedral at Covington.”

The $25,000 for the new cathedral was the largest of Walsh’s bequests, and within days all the newspapers across the region carried the many details of his generosity. His example occasioned others to make their own bequests to the new cathedral fund. Throughout that year, money steadily came in. According to The Catholic Telegraph, “the total of the bequests by November of that year amounted to $90,000.” With the cathedral parish itself having already agreed to pay $75,000 of the cost from their own pockets, it brought the total available means for construction to $165,000, which was more than the roughly $150,000 the bishop calculated it might cost.

Since his arrival in Covington in 1885, Bishop Maes had been working and praying hard for a solution to his new cathedral problem. There had been many dark times when he turned out the light at the end of a day feeling that he would never be able to build the kind of cathedral his people should have or one that was worthy enough to be a House of God. With each passing year he watched as the cost of building materials and labor increased and the cost of erecting it became greater and more unaffordable. Sometimes it seemed to him a new cathedral would never be built at all.

Yet, despite his frustrations, he knew by faith and with confidence that if God wanted a new cathedral, he would provide the means for it. Over time, Maes came to recognize that Providence had been at work all along. He mused over the reasons why Pope Leo XIII chose him, “a poor and useless servant in the vineyard of the Lord.” He knew of many other qualified candidates, and to his friends he repeatedly denied his own merits, writing, “I am fully conscious of my own unworthiness.” Yet, Camillus Paul Maes was also a man of duty and ironclad conviction, infused with a seemingly limitless energy, a boundless determination, a business savviness, creative talents and deep spiritual qualities, the kind of attributes that make apostles. Detroit’s Bishop Caspar Borgess certainly recognized this rare combination when he submitted his name to the Holy Father for the episcopacy.

Then there was the unknown little girl who visited him in 1886 with an unusual message. Described years later in a Kentucky Post interview, Bishop Maes told how she visited him one day at his office and placed into his hand a shiny, new silver dollar, telling him to “take it and build a new cathedral in Covington.” On the surface, it was the impossible request of a child; but Maes saw it differently and came to recognize it as a sign of Providence.

The bishop, like most clergymen of his day, understood that God sometimes spoke to man through the innocence of children, just as he had through the Marian apparitions of in his own day. There was the 1842 apparition at Celles in his native Belgium, in France at La Salette (1846), Lourdes (1858), Pontmain (1871), and in Germany at Marpingen (1876). According to the Post story, he took the little girl’s gesture as the sign that God wanted him to build the new St. Mary’s Cathedral. “From that hour,” the Post reported, “Bishop Maes determined to act upon the suggestion of the child, and from that day he has labored without rest to accomplish the task the child had given him to do.”

In 1890, with funds pledged and feeling the winds of Providence filling his sails at last, Bishop Maes found himself with two very large questions before him: where to locate the new cathedral, and what kind of cathedral it should be. To the first question, he chose its location at what was then considered the center of the city – the corner of Twelfth Street and Madison Avenue. Two properties were situated there — the residences of Dr. John Delaney and the McVeigh family. And when the opportunity presented itself, he purchased both, giving him a large footprint on which to build.

Back in Detroit, Leon Coquard had become an architect in his own right after leaving the employ of Albert E. French in 1887. His reputation must have been secured, because the newspapers reported he was rarely without work. Up to this point, he had been designing commercial buildings, schools and residential homes, such as the posh and spacious neo-Gothic homes of Detroit’s famed Indian Village and the sprawling Saint Peter and Paul Academy in Midtown. But it didn’t satisfy him as greatly as did his work on St. Ann’s, and he longed for a great commission to design something that would make him an architect of consequence.

Maes didn’t yet know what kind of cathedral he wanted to build, but his thoughts kept drifting back to his 1888 visit to St. Ann’s Church and the deep impressions it left on him. As a result, he had long ago settled on Leon Coquard as his architect of choice.

In June 1891, Maes finally penned a letter to Coquard asking for his terms of contract. “The fact that I select you without competitive plans is because I am pleased with your art and work,” he wrote. “I consider that your terms … for preliminary sketches, definite drawings, working plans, specifications and details, are very low. Hence, I accept your terms; and foreseeing that you will give me the best work you are capable of, I feel that I am your debtor.”

It would be another year before the two men began a serious collaboration on the plans. In a June 10, 1892, letter, Bishop Maes laid out his basic preferences for what he would like to see. His lingering worries over “burdening the people with further debt” prompted him to first suggest constructing “a lofty basement church to be used for the next two or three years or longer.” He eventually saw the folly in it and yielded to Coquard’s insistence on a full-scale Gothic cathedral. The bishop replied with simple demands: that the new Cathedral should be cruciform in its floorplan, with the apse facing east and the front “facing Madison Avenue, with a stone front, the balance of the building, Gothic style.” The details he left up to Coquard.

Within weeks, the architect sent him a detailed pen and ink rendering of the structure he proposed. It was an ambitious concept, incorporating the bishop’s earlier requests, but also presenting Coquard’s own creative vision for what he liked to call “the pure French style of Gothic Architecture.”

The main body of the church was in High Gothic style, with flying buttresses wrapping around both sides and large rose windows in the transepts to give one the impression of Notre Dame in Paris. The façade was more complex — a blending of mixed Rayonnant and Flamboyant Gothic styles, crowned by two tall, open bay bell towers liberally ensconced with pinnacles, crockets and finials.

It was beautiful, but it frightened the frugal Maes. “The trouble is,” he lamented to Coquard, “that those who appreciate true art are often the very ones who are too poor to pay for it; and I am sorry to say that this is my case and is the reason I reluctantly underwent the mortification of asking for lowest terms.”

The two men spent the rest of 1892 and much of the following year in back-and-forth discussions. They compromised on details, adding new features and removing others, refining and distilling it all down until both men were comfortable with the result. With Maes’ approval, Coquard chose the interior design after St. Denis Cathedral in Paris, its apse inspired by the apse of the Cathedral of Notre Dame d’Évreux in Normandy. The triforium was designed after the triforium of Chartres Cathedral. The façade was edited down to a modest adaptation of Notre Dame’s façade topped by the same open bay bell towers from Coquard’s original sketch.

By March 1894, with plans in hand, permits obtained, contractors hired, and construction schedule established, Bishop Maes was ready to officially break ground. Though he still felt the preliminary costs were steep, he knew these could be negotiated as work progressed. But his overriding justification for building such a costly House of Worship was expressed in an article he wrote later that year for the American Ecclesiastical Review.

“Our zeal in building churches must be a starting point toward a reviving love for Jesus Christ whose Tabernacle is erected therein,” he wrote. “Lack of traditions will make it somewhat more difficult to arouse the enthusiasm of the faithful, but the personal sacrifices which they have made to build the temple can be successfully used as a lever and as an interested incentive to make them adore and love with more exterior, and especially with more convinced interior devotion, the Divine Treasure enshrined therein.”

When Bishop Maes sank the blade of his shovel into the earth to break ground in April 1894, he had high hopes that construction would commence quickly and proceed without incident. In the weeks that followed, engineers and workmen descended on the site and began surveying and excavating the ground according to the architect’s plans. Heavy equipment moved in and steam shovels hissed and scooped, transforming the site into a beehive of activity.

Coquard’s plans called for them to dig down 25 feet along the foundation perimeters, where piers could be sunk that would support the massive weight of the cathedral super structure. But as deeper and deeper buckets of earth were scooped out, supervising civil engineer Willis Kennedy noticed a big problem. While hoping to find a stable ground for construction, he found instead only a wet, marshy soil with layers and layers of sand and clay. It didn’t look good. He knew immediately it was the type of soil upon which no cathedral could be built.

Kennedy broke the news to a stunned Bishop Maes as best he could. The bishop was devastated. The ground was what engineers called a “compressible” soil, one that was not uniform throughout and could never support the weight of a massive building weighing hundreds of tons. Kennedy tried to reassure the bishop. There were a few things he could still try in hope of saving the situation. Yet, not even the city engineer could guarantee that any of it would work.

For the first time since becoming Bishop of Covington, Camillus Paul Maes found himself with the wind completely out of his sails.

Out of struggle and hardship, a new Cathedral is born

/in

Stephen Enzweiler

Cathedral Historian

This is the fourth in a four-part series celebrating the Quasquicentennial (125th) anniversary of the Dedication of St. Mary’s Cathedral (Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption) on January 27, 1901.

In the spring of 1894, there was every reason for Bishop Camillus Maes to be optimistic. The architectural plans for the new cathedral were in hand and construction was about to begin. Yet he knew from his own experience that building any structure the size and complexity of a gothic cathedral came fraught with unexpected twists and turns. He knew there might be delays in materials delivery and construction, or plans changes caused by other unforeseen conditions. He experienced it when as a pastor he built St. John the Baptist Church in Monroe, Mich., and he experienced it dealing with the finances of building new parishes when he was chancellor of the Diocese of Detroit. Architect Leon Coquard also knew about the unforeseen. But neither man expected the kind of emergency that threatened to kill the St. Mary’s Cathedral project entirely.

“I have been thinking,” Coquard wrote Maes less than six weeks before the May 1, 1894 groundbreaking. “As Covington is so hilly and rocky, it might be possible that solid rock may not be far below the surface. Could you find out to a certainty the nature of the ground at the site?” The bishop didn’t know the answer to his question. But the initial excavations of the ground and the sudden discovery of “a wet, marshy soil with deep layers of sand and clay” surprised both men completely.

“The whole lot is endless and bottomless sand!” the bishop lamented. “About 8 ½ feet deep there is a layer of clay of seven inches in thickness, and at a depth of 15 feet another of about the same thickness. The men who worked it…assure me it is the same all over, for blocks and blocks.”

Coquard was just as surprised as the bishop. “It is impossible for me to say just what should be done,” he replied. “I have allowed about 2 ½ tons per square foot of footing. Of course, this will not do if you have the bottom which you describe.” He asked if the excavations had been made elsewhere on the property. They had. But the further borings only confirmed that no cathedral of the planned size and weight could be built on the site without risking disaster.

The ever-inquiring Bishop Maes felt confident there must be another way to approach the problem. For that he contacted Gustave Bouscaren, a Paris-trained civil engineer living in Cincinnati who the Enquirer said “had the reputation of being one of the great civil engineers of America.” He worked for Cincinnati Southern Railway for 25 years, held patents for dozens of inventions, and built most of the bridges spanning the Ohio River. He also was once appointed by President Cleveland to evaluate the Brooklyn Bridge.

After inspecting the building site, Bouscaren sent his report to the bishop. Based on his initial findings, he concluded that the allowable load capacity was easily half of what architect Coquard originally calculated, indicating the ground as it was could never support the size and weight of the cathedral as he had designed it. The bishop wrote to Coquard saying the conclusions made it “too deep to reach for foundations and unfit for draining.” Yet Bouscaren wasn’t finished. “Upon the engineer’s recommendation,” Maes wrote, “we proceed today to a test of the bearing strength of the ground.”

Bouscaren dug a well 25 feet down into the ground and built a mechanical load-bearing test apparatus at the bottom. On it he systematically placed 6,000 pounds of weight and waited to see conclusively how much weight the sandy soil could actually support. So interested was Bishop Maes in the outcome, he even assisted Bouscaren in the process, taking readings himself over the planned four-day test period. In the end, Bouscaren wrote to the bishop on July 16, noting that the result was “somewhat more favorable than I had anticipated” and advised that the tests only justified “a maximum allowance of three thousand pounds per square foot,” rather than the 6,000 pounds Coquard planned for.

Embarrassed at his miscalculation, Coquard tried to make up for it by proposing he increase the footings in size as an added precaution. But the bishop replied that he was “perfectly satisfied” with Bouscaren’s results and directed Coquard to adjust his plans accordingly. Willis Kennedy, the Covington City Engineer overseeing the process, agreed. “Hence,” the bishop wrote Coquard, “only increase the footings so as to get a bearing area of 3,000 lbs. per sq. ft.” The matter seemed to be settled after that. Two days later, Coquard’s redrawn plans arrived and construction resumed.

But the relationship between the bishop and his architect became increasingly more strained as the work progressed. Coquard’s difficulty in fitting such a massive structure into the tiny lot Maes had procured was a constant source of discussion and disagreement between the two. “If your lot were at least two hundred feet square,” he wrote, “I would not be obliged to calculate down to every inch, and could get along much faster. I am trying to arrive at the very best possible arrangements under the circumstances, and I hope that you will not force me to send out plans which are not sufficiently studied, just to gain a few days’ or even week’ time, at a cost of years of regret and dissatisfaction.”

By the spring of 1895, the steam shovels had finished their work and were replaced by block and tackles, swarms of stone masons, carpenters, brick layers, and horse-drawn wagons clattering about the streets. By late summer, the brick and limestone walls had risen to a height just below the windows.

Sunday, September 8, 1895, the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, had been chosen as the date for the laying of the cornerstone. Thousands from Covington turned out and more than 10,000 came from Cincinnati, with as many from each of the surrounding cities. All told, there was an estimated 20,000 attending the event. The newspapers reported a street parade beforehand “which completely eclipsed anything ever witnessed in Covington.” They dubbed it the “monster parade.”

“Never in the recent history of Covington has such a religious demonstration been witnessed on the streets,” reported the Kentucky Post. The parade was four miles in length with more than 4,500 men, boys, clergy and public officials participating.  It took hours to arrive at the cathedral site.  When time came for the blessing of the cornerstone and the walls, with the priests kneeling, facing a wooden cross, they chanted the litany of the saints led by Bishop Maes, who rose to perform the dedication. It was then that everyone noticed her.

“As the assemblage of bishops and priests climbed the steps,” the Enquirer reported, “a little golden-haired girl, dressed in pure white, and reflecting from her face religious faith and innocence, clung to the cornerstone and hung there during the ceremonies.” Bishop Maes in particular could not help noticing her. Neither could every other bishop and priest there. For Maes, her presence clinging to that cornerstone had the same unusual quality as did another little girl he encountered some years earlier who handed him a silver dollar and tasked him to “build a cathedral in Covington.” As he ascended the wooden steps, Bishop Maes carried in his hand a copper box, among whose contents was the same silver dollar she had given him. He placed the box inside the cornerstone niche and mortared it in place with a sterling silver trowel. None of the bishops, priests or attendants told the little girl to leave.

The cornerstone laying that Sunday continued the community’s great pilgrimage toward the new cathedral’s eventual completion and dedication. As the days and months passed, residents watched in fascination as the beautiful French gothic edifice rose incrementally toward the heavens. No one had ever seen anything like it before. With its progress, enthusiasm of the parishioners and the city residents mounted. Everyone from the wealthy of Covington to the poorest of the poor realized they were to have a House of God “which would rank architecturally among the notable cathedrals of the country, an edifice eminently worthy of its sacred purpose and at the same time a great honor to the city and the State.”

“Splendid Edifice Now Nearing Completion in Covington” said the headline in the Cincinnati Enquirer on the morning of Nov. 5, 1899. “Bishop Maes lays no claim to as superb an edifice as the grand cathedrals that grace England and the continent of Europe,” the article said. “He is convinced that his is the finest temple of purely gothic architecture in America.” Indeed, it had been a herculean effort, and it came at a personal price. When Camillus Paul Maes began construction, he was still a robust man, his black, curling hair showed only a few scattered flecks of grey. But looking into the mirror in the days before the cathedral’s dedication, it was completely white.

The original estimated cost of the new cathedral had been $150,000 in 1893. But by the time of the dedication, that amount had ballooned to $250,000. By the spring of 1900, funds for further construction had again run out. “My debt is so large now that I may not add another hundred dollars to it,” he wrote Coquard. “Let me know immediately what hope of completion of the job is held out.” By that summer, it was obvious the façade would have to wait, so the bishop ordered the architect to brick up the front wall temporarily until he “had the means to erect the towers and front entrances.”

By January 1901, the construction crews were gone, and the streets of Covington filled with a feeling of quiet excitement as the big day approached. On January 7, Maes sat down in his office and penned a final note to Leon Coquard in Detroit. “The Dedication will take place on Sunday, January 27th 1901,” it said simply. “You are kindly invited to attend.”

January 27 dawned cold and cloudy, with flecks of snow drifting in a brisk north wind.

Bishop Maes, accompanied by “the venerable and revered Most Rev. William Henry Elder, Archbishop of Cincinnati,” a dozen other bishops and dozens more priests, celebrated Holy Mass one final time in the old cathedral on Eighth Street, then moved in procession through the cold to the new cathedral.

“The majestic and devotional ceremonial of the Catholic Church was never before displayed in Covington as on yesterday,” wrote the Cincinnati Commercial Appeal. “A ceremonial ancient, yet ever new, and in which every act and every vestment, every prelate and every priest, every psalm and every ceremonial portrayed to the faithful the passion, the death and the glorious triumph of Christ, the Son of God.” A magnificent musical program was rendered by the full Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, augmented by a choir of four hundred voices. In the congregation was a subdued but happy Leon Coquard. In his own words, he said he had designed it “with the idea in mind that it should stand for centuries as a monument, and symbolical of the strength and purity of the Christian faith.”

When Bishop Maes approached the completed interior for the first time, he remarked, “As I walked down the aisle and saw the white marble steps of the sanctuary, I felt I was at the gate of heaven!”

Now with the work completed, the long pilgrimage ended, the job finished, Bishop Maes looked upon his accomplishment with a bittersweet reflection. He had hoped to complete the cathedral during his lifetime, but now out of funds, he longed to start work on the facade. It seemed to him he might never live to see it. But the winds of Providence still graced the effort, and not a few years would pass before work would begin again to that purpose.

The Bishop and the Architect

/in

Stephen Enzweiler

Cathedral Historian

This is the second in a four-part series celebrating the Quasquicentennial (125th) anniversary of the Dedication of St. Mary’s Cathedral (Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption) on January 27, 1901.

On the cold, starlit night of Friday, Jan. 22, 1885, Bishop-elect Camillus Paul Maes walked into the spacious front parlor of a house in Detroit and was greeted by warm applause from a large assembly of the membership of the Young Men’s Catholic Union, a Detroit Catholic social and fraternal organization. Also in attendance were diocesan clergy and local political figures, all of whom had known him for years. They came that night to say goodbye to their long-time friend on the eve of his departure from Detroit. Early the next morning, he would be on a train heading south to take charge of his new See in Covington, Kentucky.

The Bishop-elect graciously took his seat on the platform and was soon visibly overwhelmed by the many outward expressions of farewell and good wishes from so many good and dear friends. Rev. James G. Walshe, pastor of SS. Peter and Paul’s Church, the Diocese’s mother church and Cathedral, stood up and addressed the crowd: “The time has come when a sorrowful word of farewell must be said to a beloved priest. The burdens of the episcopacy are such that many have avoided the acceptance of them, but in obedience to the divine call, the new Bishop has made a sacrifice, and the wishes of his fellow clergymen and his friends are that God will bless him in his office.” After finishing, Walshe presented Maes with a set of episcopal vestments which he had displayed on one side of the room.

Another group of clergymen presented the Bishop-elect with a large oil portrait taken from a photograph, along with a chalice studded with precious stones. Catholic Union member James L. Edson presented him with an episcopal cross on a massive gold chain and an elegantly engraved amethyst ring. “It is in earnest appreciation,” Edson said in his remarks, “of your labors, of your exemplary piety, exalted character and strict adherence to duty that we tender to you this slight testimonial, and we do so with the hope that no cross which you may have to bear will be more onerous or less honorable than that which we now present you.”

Among those in the crowd attending the farewell reception that night, standing in the packed room amid the well-wishers, was a dapper, bespectacled 23-year-old architect and fellow Catholic Union member named Leon Coquard. The Bishop-elect knew him well. The two became acquainted in 1880 after Maes was transferred from his pastorate at St. Mary Parish in Monroe to became secretary to Detroit’s Bishop Caspar Borgess. Like many others in the room, Coquard could also bear testimony to how zealously Bishop Maes labored for the Catholic Union and the good he had done. Maes was a member of its Board of Directors, and because of his literary reputation for having written a popular biography of Kentucky missionary Rev. Charles Nerinckx, he became the chairman of its “Reading Room and Literary Committee” of which the young Leon Coquard was a regular member. His relationship with Coquard would be one of the most important and deeply consequential of his future episcopacy, as will be seen.

Leon Coquard was born in Detroit on Sept. 11, 1861, the third son to Nicholas and Marie (Stiker) Coquard. His father was from Paris, where he worked in the carpentry trade until emigrating to America. After settling in Detroit, Nicholas continued working as a carpenter, eventually seizing upon various opportunities to work as a builder and contractor, ventures that permitted him to grow more wealthy as time went on. Eventually, he would own more than a dozen rental properties and valuable tracts of land which he kept until his death in 1886. Nicholas was the ever-independent man, a personal trait his son seemed to inherit.

Leon Coquard had always been the talented and creative offspring. From a young age he excelled as an artist, able to effortlessly render finely detailed drawings of whatever struck his fancy. While one older brother became a dentist and another became a banker, Leon was instead attracted to his father’s work and to the construction of the great buildings of his day. He studied how they were designed, what materials were used, how they were put together, and how they should look when finished. However, Leon didn’t want to become like his father. As he matured into an ambitious young adult, he began to dream of ventures bigger than those of his father’s world, preferring to set out on his own course, under his own power, in a cause of his own making. More than anything else, he longed to accomplish something for himself.

The Coquards were part of the Detroit French Catholic community and were long-time parishioners at St. Anne’s Church in Detroit. Leon attended parochial schools and afterward attended a technical academy to study and acquire an education in architecture and design. It must be remembered that in his day, there were no formal testing or certification requirements for becoming an architect. Instead, one had to rely on the public recognition of one’s craft through education and years of apprenticeship in order to credibly and respectably enter the profession. Reputation and public reviews of one’s work became the accepting standard. And so, it was to the surprise of some when the 19-year-old Coquard, fresh out of school and without a shred of experience, brashly listed himself in the 1880 Detroit City Directory as being an “Architect.”

Armed with some education in architecture, Leon Coquard became apprenticed as a draftsman in the employ of Albert E. French, an eminent Canadian architect living in Detroit who specialized in “the design of public buildings, churches, schools and theaters.” In Coquard, French found a skilled and precise hand, an imaginative mind, and an ambitious, hard-working and punctilious servant of the architectural trade. He seemed an ideal candidate who might one day become an eminent architect himself. So skilled was this new draftsman, thought French, that he gradually began entrusting him with the responsibilities of developing architectural plans for various building projects he had under contract.

Coquard’s big chance to show what he could do came in 1886 when Albert E. French was contracted to design and build a new St. Anne’s Church in Detroit. St. Anne’s was the second oldest Roman Catholic parish in the country, founded in 1701 by French explorers and having a rich history that reached back to the early years of the growing Michigan frontier. The old church being replaced was erected in 1828 and had become too small for the rapidly growing French Catholic community of the city. French was contracted for his architectural services and served as the responsible party of record; but it was Leon Coquard, French’s employee, to whom the actual design and the drawing of the plans was entrusted. He would not disappoint.

It took only a few months’ time before he had them ready. The final design was a French gothic church with the typical cruciform plan and followed the customary decorative and structural patterns of churches in northern France. It was large, spacious, traditional, gothic, and French. The interior had three levels: a main arcade, a triforium and a clerestory with stained glass windows. The individual arcades in the triforium were painted with religious symbols and the images of French saints. Twin spires soared above its exterior façade, and between them was a large, ornate rose window of exquisite beauty. When St. Anne’s Church was finally dedicated in late 1887, the French community was thrilled with the result. The Michigan Catholic called it “one of the grandest Christian temples in the West.”

In 1889, Bishop Maes finally got to visit the newly completed St. Anne’s Church in person. He was both surprised and deeply moved by what he saw. In his mind, it took him back to memories of his favorite churches and Cathedrals of his seminary days in Bruges, Louvain and Mechlin, Belgium. He had no illusions yet about what kind of an edifice he wanted for his own new Cathedral in Covington — a persistent debt and lack of money would not let him even consider it. But he liked what he saw in St. Anne’s, and he would keep the experience of it close to his heart.

On that day, a seed was planted in the mind of Bishop Maes that would, in time, become a mighty oak. As time passed, his appreciation for the importance of Leon Coquard to both himself and to the future of Covington only increased. Seeing what his friend could produce convinced him that he was the only architect possible to design his new Cathedral. And when the time came, the Bishop would defend his choice by remarking that what he saw in Coquard was “the promise of great ability, even of genius.”

“You will have heard through friends that I was very much pleased with your work,” he wrote the young architect in June 1892, “that St. Anne’s Church strikes my notion … as to what my new Cathedral shall be.”

A new cathedral was his dearest wish, but would his people ever see it?

/in

Stephen Enzweiler

Cathedral Historian

This is the first of a four-part series celebrating the Quasquicentennial (125th) anniversary of the Dedication of St. Mary’s Cathedral (Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption) on January 27, 1901.

On a hot June afternoon in 1885, a reporter from the Detroit Free Press called on the new Bishop of Covington at his episcopal residence on Eighth Street in Covington. It had been six months since the Most Rev. Camillus Paul Maes was consecrated and installed as Covington’s third prelate, and the people back home in his old diocese wanted to know how he was getting along in his new post. The reporter was fortunate to find him at home. For the past six months, the bishop had been on the road traveling extensively, visiting the parishes, missions and institutions of his new See.

“How do you like your new field of labor?” the reported asked, pulling out his notepad and settling himself into one of the comfortable chairs in the bishop’s study. Maes, with his customary cheerfulness laughingly replied, “I have to like it! When I was summoned by the Holy Father to assume the great responsibilities of my office, I obediently did so and I will strive to do my best for my people.”

But accepting the Pope’s appointment hadn’t been his first inclination. Writing to a friend just after receiving the appointment, he admitted that as a priest he “had been taught to fear the episcopal state.” But little by little, he came to reconsider his position. “I am fully conscious of my own unworthiness,” he wrote. “But I may at least lay claim to a sincere determination to work for the greater glory of God and for the salvation of souls.”

Privately, he was forced to face his own fears and conclude that it was God’s will that he accept. On Jan. 9, 1885, he put pen to paper and wrote his letter of acceptance to Cardinal Simeoni, prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith “accepting the letters which in your kindness you have sent from His Holiness appointing me to the Episcopal See of Covington.” Fourteen days later, he was on a train headed south to his new life.

Unlike many newly minted American bishops of his day, Camillus Paul had a head start when it came to how the episcopacy worked. When the reporter from the Detroit Free Press asked him of his expectations, the bishop spoke of having “one great advantage.”

“As secretary of the Diocese of Detroit under Bishop Borgess,” he explained, “I had opportunities to become thoroughly acquainted with a bishop’s duties.” Indeed, Father Maes’ proximity to the high affairs of the prelature and his charge over the business affairs of the Detroit Diocese gave him ample experience and sufficient confidence in knowing not only how bishops govern, but also in how to manage the ever-present financial challenges, a skill at which he quickly excelled.

“I soon had everything reduced to business principles,” he told the reporter. As Covington’s new shepherd, he explained that he was determined to conduct diocesan affairs just as a man would look after his business. “This is the only way to succeed.”

But as the bishop settled into his new post in the spring of 1885, it became quickly apparent he was facing some very serious problems. Two obstacles stood in the way of his plans to grow and modernize the Covington diocese. The first and most pressing matter was the crushing debt that had been hanging like a Sword of Damocles over the Diocese since the days of Bishops Carrell and Toebbe. The other problem was that the people focused their interests on their individual parishes without thinking of themselves as belonging to the Diocese at all.

If there was a symbol of all the problems he was facing, the bishop could find it represented in the edifice of St. Mary’s Cathedral. From the moment he first arrived, he was shocked to find it in such a dilapidated condition, which moved him to lament to a friend: “The old Catholic Church is falling in ruin!”

At one time, St. Mary’s Cathedral had been a handsome edifice … practical and efficient to its purpose, sacred in its interior appointments, and considered for years by the community as one of the more beautiful ornaments of the city. It served the diocese and its people as the mother church for 21 years; but by the time Bishop Maes came, many felt its appearance had fallen beneath the dignity of the diocese, prompting calls from most quarters of the city for a new cathedral.

In 1852, Rev. Thomas R. Butler, the pastor of St. Mary’s Parish Church on Fifth Street, purchased five lots on the north side of Eighth Street for the purpose of using them as the location for a new and larger parish church. His old church had served a rapidly growing English-speaking Catholic community since 1834. But by 1850, the increase in the volume of parishioners and overuse of the church had caused it to fall into what Father Butler called “a very ruined state.”

As he prepared to begin construction on his new church, word arrived that on July 29, 1853, Pope Pius IX, in his Papal Bull Apostolici ministerii, had erected a new diocese with its Episcopal See located in the City of Covington. Father Butler and a newly arrived Bishop-Elect Carrell realized there were no more funds available to purchase more property or materials to construct the required Cathedral. This resulted in the decision by both men to use the Eighth Street lots purchased by Butler for that purpose, and they would call the new edifice St. Mary’s Cathedral.

According to Rev. Paul Ryan in “History of the Diocese of Covington,” it was Bishop-Elect Carrell who drew up the plans for this new house of God, “being as conservative as possible in view of the poverty of the Diocese.” The structure was Tudor in its overall design, a brick-and-mortar edifice with tall, stained-glass windows and a bell tower that would call the people each Sunday to what the Catholic Telegraph called a “temple to the living God.”

Construction began in August 1853, and on Sunday, Oct. 2, Bishop Carrell laid the cornerstone amid great crowds and fanfare. Four to five thousand people poured onto Eighth Street that day. All of the Catholic societies from Covington, Cincinnati and Newport came with their banners, processing through the streets of the city behind bands playing religious hymns. By December the roof was on, and on June 11, 1854, Covington’s first cathedral was dedicated at last.

St. Mary’s Cathedral was 126 feet long and 66 feet wide and constructed of brick in the English Tudor style. The exterior brickwork had panels, dentils and buttresses framing rows of double stained-glass windows, each opened by pull-chains for ventilation during the hot summer months. The façade held the customary three door entrance and a single central window and included a 150-foot steeple that held a 2,000-pound bell. Inside the front doors was an open vestibule with sturdy columns supporting an ample choir loft above. One could stand inside the front doors and see the entire Cathedral interior at a glance. Three aisles trisected the nave. In the center was a wide central pew section with added rows along each outer wall. Gas lamps mounted every seventh pew provided lighting for parishioners if needed.

Cincinnati church artist Ulrich Christian Tandrop (1819-1899) decorated the walls and ceilings of the nave and painted the large canvas Stations of the Cross that hung on the walls. Beyond a wide gothic communion rail was the sanctuary, adorned with fret work, columns and niches and richly painted. Beneath the high altar was a crypt in which Bishops Carrell and Toebbe’s remains were eventually entombed.

It was a handsome structure and became the pride of the city. The Covington Journal proclaimed the new Cathedral as “creditable to the Church and an ornament to the city.” The Catholic Telegraph noted the Cathedral Church “will for a time supply every want. But it warned, “the daily increase of our population and the prosperous impetus given to our city … must soon render it necessary to again build for the accommodation of the English-speaking Catholics.”

By the time of his death in1868, Bishop Carrell began to realize the necessity of building an even larger edifice to serve the ever-growing Catholic population. Within two years, the growing population wasn’t the only problem the new Bishop Toebbe faced: in the cathedral edifice itself, irregularities began to appear. Structural issues and instability in the church steeple forced its removal. The roof leaked, staining Tandrop’s ornately painted ceiling. On the exterior, water incursion from overflowing and leaky gutters and downspouts began eating away at the brickwork.

The death of Bishop Carrell in 1868 and the tremendous diocesan debt he left to Bishop Toebbe postponed any plans of building a new Cathedral. A year later, the Covington Journal reported that “the congregation have abandoned the project of building a new house of worship, and will immediately commence the work of repairing and renovating the building now used by them.” In 1872, the newspaper criticized it as a “Cathedral building which ought to be the best, but is probably the least imposing.”

As he studied the problems set before him, Bishop Maes realized he would never be able to build a new cathedral until he first dealt with the substantial diocesan debt accrued by his predecessors. “The Diocese is poor and burdened with debt,” he wrote Cincinnati’s Archbishop William Elder. “My debts weigh heavily on my young shoulders, they being little short of $100,000 in a poor southern diocese!”

He also had to contend with the Cathedral’s debt, since parishes were responsible for maintaining their own buildings. Repairs had begun on the structure in 1875, and by 1879, the parish debt had grown to more than $35,000. From the pulpit each Sunday the bishop pleaded for contributions to both causes. He held fundraising coffees at his residence and petitioned prominent businessmen for assistance. Nothing was enough.

Then in 1886, Bishop Maes convoked a Diocesan Synod, whose purpose was primarily to address the enactments of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, but he also brought up the pressing organizational and financial issues facing the diocese and especially the problems of the cathedral. Drawing on his experience of reducing everything to business principles, the Synod set into motion a plan that led to the liquidation of the diocesan debt over a five-year period. At another meeting with cathedral parishioners, at the bishop’s encouragement, parishioners resolved to form a debt-paying Society at which over 80 members enrolled. In March, the Ladies’ Altar Society and Cathedral Church Debt Association was also organized.

It was a good first step. The bishop knew these efforts would work and pay off the debt over time. But that didn’t solve the problem of where to find the funds for a new cathedral. This issue would continue to preoccupy the pragmatic and business-oriented Maes for the rest of his episcopacy. He worried constantly over burdening his people with further debt and resolved to build a new house of worship for Christ and “the salvation of souls,” one that would last the centuries.

A new cathedral had become his dearest wish, but when would his people ever see it?