When I hear "St. Patrick's Cathedral," this is what I think of:
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| Photo from the New York Daily News |
. . . the huge, neo-Gothic church in Midtown Manhattan. I didn't know there was another St. Patrick's, distinguished from its more famous cousin by a few name changes: The BASILICA of St. Patrick's OLD Cathedral.
This much humbler church is located in the NoLIta ("North of Little Italy") area of NYC. The second Catholic church to be built in NYC (but apparently the first cathedral), it was named after Ireland's patron saint and was the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York City until its more famous cousin opened in 1879.
Here is the 4th Archbishop of NYC, John J. Hughes, "Immigrant" (from Ireland, of course) and "Shepherd":
Hughes served as Archbishop from 1842 to 1864. During that time, there was an explosion of Irish immigration. Half of the immigrants to the United States in the 1840s were from Ireland, and between 1820 and 1860, the Irish constituted over a third of all U.S. immigrants. Between 1820 and 1920, as many as 4.5 million Irish arrived in America. They were a force to be reckoned with--and not always very well liked.
