St. Mary's Church is a Roman Catholic house of worship on Lodge Street in downtown Albany, New York, United States. It is a brick structure with an Italian Romanesque Revival exterior. Built in the 1860s, it is the third church to house the oldest Catholic congregation not only in the city, but in all of upstate New York. In 1977, St. Mary's Church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places; it is also a contributing property to the Downtown Albany Historic District, listed several years later.

The congregation of St. Mary's was established in the late 18th century. Early in the next century, the first church was built on the present location when the city donated the land, supposedly on the property where St. Isaac Jogues took shelter after escaping from captivity in the early 17th century. The current building, designed by local architects Nichols & Brown, is the third on the site; its tower was added in 1895. In the late 20th century, the interior and exterior were extensively renovated.

Some important figures in the American Church have visited or been associated with the church. John McCloskey, the first Bishop of Albany and later the first American-born cardinal, made St. Mary's his procathedral briefly. John Neumann, later a saint, celebrated a Mass there as a newly ordained priest. Clarence A. Walworth, a convert from Episcopalianism, who was the first advocate for the sainthood of Kateri Tekakwitha, among other contributions to the Church, was pastor of St. Mary's for most of the late 19th century and was responsible for much of the look of the current building, inside and out.

The church's interior incorporates a combination of the Mannerist and French Gothic styles, in contrast to its exterior. Upon completion of the tower in 1894, the church was wired, making it the first church in Albany to have electric lighting. In 1912, the original stained glass windows were replaced. Beyond these developments, there have been no significant changes to the building since its construction.

Building

The church and neighboring rectory, on its north, occupy the block between Steuben Street on the north, Chapel Street on the east, Pine Street on the south and Lodge on the west. It is on the western edge of the Downtown Albany Historic District. The terrain rises gently to the west, and descends to the level ground adjacent to the Hudson River, a half-mile (1 km) to the east. The surrounding neighborhood is heavily developed and urban, with a mix of government, commercial and other institutional buildings.

A parking lot across Lodge separates the church from the home of the New York State Court of Appeals, the state's highest court. It, too, is listed on the Register, like Albany City Hall to its south, just past some other older buildings. On the northwest is the main Albany County courts building. A parking garage is to the south, across Pine, while commercial buildings are on the north and east.

Two other listed buildings are within two blocks. The old YMCA building is on Steuben at North Pearl Street (New York State Route 32) and to the southwest at Lodge and State Street (New York State Route 5) is St. Peter's Episcopal Church, a National Historic Landmark (NHL) designed by Richard Upjohn and his son. Another NHL, the New York State Capitol, is across Lafayette Park from the Court of Appeals and City Hall.

Exterior

The church is a two-and-a-half-story, three-by-six-bay brick structure with marble trim on a cut bluestone foundation, gradually exposed towards the rear by the slope of the underlying land. The middle bay on the west (front) facade projects slightly, forming the lower stages of the bell tower. Atop the main block is a steeply pitched gabled roof. A five-section semicircular apse is attached to the rear.

A stone water table sets off the foundation. Small barred windows are located in every bay along the basement. At the corners are slightly projecting stone columns. They are echoed by stone quoins on the tower. A stone cornice also divides the first and second stories on the west facade.See accompanying photos

All three bays of the first floor have entrances in quoined triple-recessed round arches. On the outer two bays, narrow smooth round columns rise to the springline. Above the heavy wooden recessed-paneled door is a decorative transom with circular lights. On the second story, fenestration consists of round-arched stained glass windows, less recessed but flanked by more ornate columns.

On the side elevations, stone columns form round arches around all but the easternmost bay. Within their slight recesses are narrow four-paned stained glass. The rear bay is set off by columns like those on the corners and has no arch, but is otherwise similarly treated. At the roofline, a denticulated cornice is below the overhanging eave. A small vestibule connects the church to its rectory on the north.

Bell tower

There are four stages to the tower. On the first is the deeply recessed main entrance, with a treatment otherwise similar to the side entrances. The corners are quoined. A single narrow window with a round segmental arch in brick sits in the center of both side faces. Above them, and flanking a brass light fixture over the main entrance, are stone crosses with recessed middles set into the brick.

A sloped cornice, at a higher level than that on the main facade, sets off the next stage. It has the bottom of a two-stage recessed arch on both sides. Its sole fenestration is the ornate narrow double window on the east. Another cornice sets off the third stage, which has a four-part window topped by a small rosette-shaped window under an arch that becomes stone at the springline. The rosette becomes a semicircle on the sides, just above the gable apex.

Above the third stage, a frieze of rusticated stone blocks and another cornice sets off the fourth stage. On all sides, stone-topped arches, rising from foliate stonecarvings at the springline, open into the belfry. They are supported by stone columns with a small balustrade at the base. At the top, brick corbels on stone bases support the broad overhanging eave of the pyramidal roof, clad in green tile. It is crowned by an Angel of Judgment blowing a trumpet.

Interior

In the church vestibule is a baptismal font, made of white Carrara marble with a pewter upper covering and silver basin. Inside, a gallery runs around the sides and back on the upper story, supported by clustered columns in a French Gothic style. It ends near the chancel, creating the illusion of transept arms on either side. Near the altar, the arches are styled in the fashion of the Italian Renaissance.

The pews are crafted from pine and painted to look grained in order to resemble oak, capped with black walnut. It is complemented by the communion rail, made of black walnut with oak spindles. The Stations of the Cross around the side are carved painted reliefs set in wooden frames. Brown metal plaques, covering the original German text, describe each one. Around the church are four separate altars, most in white with gilded trim. Atop one altar are carved wooden statues of four saints—Isaac Jogues, Elizabeth Ann Seton, John Neumann and Kateri Tekakwitha—all of whom had at least a tangential connection to the church during their lives.

Above the gallery are statues and paintings of other architectural elements. Combined, they create the impression of a clerestory. On the ceiling is painted a further trompe-l'œil.

History

St. Mary's traces its heritage to the earliest days of Catholic missionary work in the New World. After formally becoming a church late in the 18th century, it went through two buildings in the 19th century to accommodate a population increased by immigration before the construction of the current building.

1643–1797: Establishment of Catholicism in Albany

In 1643, Albany was still the small Dutch colonial outpost of Fort Orange. That year, visiting Mohawks brought a French captive along on one of their visits. He was a Jesuit priest, Isaac Jogues, who had come to them earlier as a missionary. Anticipating that Jogues would likely be killed by his captors, Arent van Curler helped the priest to escape, hiding him in his barn until a deal could be reached and the Frenchman put on a ship to take him downriver to New Amsterdam. This event is the earliest recorded presence of the Catholic Church in Albany. Jogues would later return to the Mohawk Valley, and three years later, he and two other missionaries were killed by the Mohawks at Auriesville. They were all later canonized by the church as three of the North American Martyrs.

Later in the century, Fort Orange became the English city of Albany. Its citizens, reflecting the city's Dutch and English background, were predominantly Protestant, but among them were a small group of Catholics. By 1794, almost two decades after American independence, there were enough Catholics to ask the Vatican for permission to buy land to build a church. Two years later, the congregation formally incorporated, becoming the second Catholic church in the state, after St. Peter's in New York.

The parishioners had been celebrating Mass at the homes of their prosperous members. The first order of business for the new church's board of trustees was to find land and build a church. Plans for a modest building were drawn up, but land had not been found. In 1797, the city donated to the church the property where Jogues had hidden on his escape, and where the parish has been located ever since. The cornerstone was laid shortly thereafter.

1798–1828: First church

The first St. Mary's Church building opened for services in late 1798. It was a plain brick building square with no belfry and a pyramidal roof with a cross. Above the main door, the entablature contained a plaque with the name of the builders and a skull and crossbones. Inside were two galleries, one of which contained what is believed to be the first organ installed in a church in Albany. It was the first church dedicated to the Virgin Mary in the state of New York, and the second permanent Catholic church built in the state.

At the time, the church's parish covered almost all of upstate New York, south to Poughkeepsie and north to what is today the Canada–US border (when the northern country was still known as British North America), and west as far as Rochester. Its second pastor, Matthew O'Brien, helped establish St. Mary's within Albany society by giving homilies of such quality that they attracted Protestant leaders from Albany and elsewhere in the state.

St. Mary's was part of the Diocese of Baltimore, but only for three years. Pope Pius VII created the Diocese of New York in 1801. It took another 15 years to seat a bishop. The church's congregation continued to grow slowly, reaching 300 by 1820. Newer parishes were established in other cities in the Capital District and Mohawk Valley.

Church lore holds that Marquis de Lafayette, French hero of the Revolutionary War, attended Mass on one or both of his visits to Albany during his 1824–25 American tour, but no contemporary newspaper records that he did. Later in 1825, the church was among the many that took part in official ceremonies marking the opening of the Erie Canal, which had a great impact on St. Mary's, as the canal and the industrialization that it spurred brought many Catholic immigrants, particularly from Ireland, to the city and the region. In Albany, St. Mary's was initially enough for them, but in other cities, they established their own churches, and the parishes with them, diminishing St. Mary's to Albany and its immediate vicinity in the process.