Holy Name Cathedral Parish will mark its 175th anniversary on Nov. 18.  Cardinal Cupich will celebrate a Mass to mark the occasion on Nov. 24.

While the parish was formally founded on Nov. 18, 1849, its roots date back even further, to the first bishop of the Diocese of Chicago, William Quarter.

When Bishop Quarter arrived in 1844, a year after the Diocese of Chicago was established, the diocese encompassed all of Illinois and there was only one church, St. Mary’s, now Old St. Mary’s in the South Loop.

Bishop Quarter and his brother Walter were the only priests, so he quickly figured out he needed a way to train new priests to minister to the growing number of people settling in the city. He founded Chicago’s first institution for higher learning, the University of St. Mary of the Lake, in 1846. It was located on the site of the present cathedral.

The seminary built a chapel and named it Holy Name, explained Charles Heinrich, archival technician at the Cardinal Bernardin Archives and Records Center.

Soon after the chapel opened, people living around that area started to attend Mass there, and their numbers were growing, seminary staff realized.

“Very early on they realized they might as well turn the chapel into a parish,” Heinrich said.

So on Nov. 18, 1849, Holy Name Parish was established. Two years later, construction began on a larger church to accommodate the growing congregation.

“While this is a parish [in the 1850s], it is not yet a cathedral. Old St. Mary’s is still the cathedral. It remains that way for the first three or so bishops,” Heinrich said.

A cornerstone was laid in 1853 for an even larger Gothic church on the site under the direction of the second bishop of Chicago, James Van De Velde.

“Chicago’s Gothic Cathedral was completed in 1855 at the cost of $100,000,” says a brief history of the cathedral published in the 1930s. “The building of Milwaukee brick was 190 feet long and 84 feet wide, huge proportions for that time.”

Despite its unfinished steeple, it stood as the tallest building in Chicago. The building was not completed before it was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire in 1871.

“One of the priests of Holy Name at the time during the fire actually rushed in when the building was burning to take out the Blessed Sacrament and run out before the whole thing basically came crashing down on the insides,” Heinrich said.  

Soon after the fire, diocesan priests began traveling to cities around the country appealing for donations to rebuild the cathedral, Heinrich said. Leading church architect Patrick Kelley was hired to design the structure.

In 1874, construction began on the present-day cathedral and it was completed in just a year.

The ornate wooden ceiling dates to the reconstruction. Stained glass windows featuring mysteries of the rosary lined the church, along with murals on the walls.

Because of rapid growth in the Midwest, the Holy See made the Diocese of Chicago an archdiocese in 1880 and appointed its first archbishop, Patrick Feehan.

Under Archbishop Feehan’s direction, between 1889 and 1893, the cathedral underwent a structural and interior renovation that included buttressing the tower and main walls and fixing a sagging foundation.

To raise money for the work, the cathedral rented out its pews. Parishioners could rent the front pews and those along the main aisle for $25. Pews in the side aisles were rented for $5.50.

Over the years, the cathedral campus expanded.

“As the city grows around the cathedral, they start to expand. They make schools — they originally had a boys’ and a girls’ school,” Heinrich said.

Around 1914, the cathedral underwent a particularly unique expansion.

“When they decide they need more room, they actually make a slice in the cathedral and they pushed the sanctuary back 15 feet,” he said.

Life at Holy Name Cathedral Parish continued uninterrupted until 1968, when the cathedral underwent a major reconstruction and renovation to repair a weakened wooden foundation that threatened to shutter the church for good. The interior also underwent extensive renovation, much of what is seen in the present-day cathedral.

“As the sanctuary is redesigned in keeping with the liturgical directives of the Second Vatican Council, attention will be on the Altar of Sacrifice. To the side of this new main altar will be the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, where the Eucharist is to be reposed,” stated a press release from the archdiocese on April 23, 1968. “On the other side will be a shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary. A new addition will be the Baptistery Chapel, to be used for baptisms.”

The cathedral officially reopened with Midnight Mass in 1969.

Notable people have visited the cathedral, including St. John Paul II, who took part in a service there in 1979.

“How greatly I would like to meet each one of you personally, to visit you in your homes, to walk your streets so that I may better understand the richness of your personalities and the depth of your aspiration. May God uplift humanity in this great city of Chicago,” he told the gathering and the wider community during the service, according to the Chicago Tribune.

In February 2008, the cathedral was temporarily closed again after decorative wood pieces began falling from the ceiling. Inspections showed that the roof structure had been compromised over its 133-year life. The cathedral’s doors remained closed for more than six months as engineers figured out how to support the roof.

A year later, in February 2009, less than six months after the cathedral reopened, a fire in the attic area just below the roof left the oak and walnut ceiling intact but again closed the building until August of that year while repairs were made.

Firefighters were able to save the building by pouring water on the roof from hook-and-ladder trucks while others crawled along narrow planks in the attic, fighting the fire from inside the roof.

The cathedral’s gingerbread house-type wooden ceiling has always been one of the most noticeable aspects of the interior. It was buffed to shine during the repair process.

“Every one of the 23,000 pieces of wood was sanded and refinished,” Msgr. Dan Mayall, then the rector, told Chicago Catholic.

In some cases, pieces were  refashioned.

“In two years, over 1,000 have been replaced,” he said.

It took workers more than two weeks to apply new 23-karat gold leaf on the cathedral’s trim.

Water also damaged all five canvas medallions added to the ceiling during the last set of repairs. The medallions, four smaller ones featuring traditional symbols of the evangelists — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — and a larger center one with IHS superimposed over a phoenix (the symbol for the archdiocese), also were replaced.

The medallions replaced wooden ones installed in the 1960s that had started to sag away from the ceiling.

To learn more about the anniversary, visit holynamecathedral.org.