The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception is a historic

cathedral A cathedral is a church that contains the '' cathedra'' () of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference, or episcopate. Churches with the function of "cathedral" are usually specific to those Christian denomination ...

at 307 Congress Street in

Portland, Maine Portland is the largest city in the U.S. state of Maine and the seat of Cumberland County. Portland's population was 68,408 in April 2020. The Greater Portland metropolitan area is home to over half a million people, the 104th-largest metropol ...

that serves as seat of the

Diocese of Portland The Diocese of Portland is an ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church in the New England region of the United States comprising the entire state of Maine. It is led by a bishop, and its cathedral, or mother church, is the Cat ...

. The pastor is Bishop Robert Deeley, and the rector is Father Seamus Griesbach. The church, an imposing

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

structure built in 1866–69, was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1985. It is the tallest building in Portland and the third tallest in Maine.

Architecture and history

The Roman Catholic diocese complex occupies most of a city block, bounded by Cumberland Avenue, Locust Street, Congress Street, and Franklin Street. The main church building is set on the northwest side of the property, facing Cumberland Avenue, while the parish hall extends northeast from its rear, and the bishop's residence stands to its southeast, facing Congress Street. To the left (south) of the residence stands a two-story school. The church is an imposing masonry structure, built of red brick, with sandstone trim and a slate roof. The main façade has a central entrance recessed in a sandstone Gothic arch, with a large stained glass rose window above. The main tower rises to the right of the main entrance, with buttressed corners, narrow Gothic windows, and an octagonal spire. Windows on the side walls are also Gothic, with buttressing between. The interior of the cathedral is . The nave is long, rises , and holds almost 1,000 worshipers. The tallest of the cathedral's three steeples is, at , the tallest structure in the city of Portland. Construction began in 1866 under the supervision of New York architect

Patrick Keely Patrick Charles Keely (August 9, 1816 — August 11, 1896) was an Irish-American architect based in Brooklyn, New York, and Providence, Rhode Island. He was a prolific designer of nearly 600 churches and hundreds of other institutional buildin ...

. Construction of the church was interrupted by Portland's great 1866 fire, and it was not completed until September 8, 1869.The cathedral has undergone restorations in 1921, 1969, and 2000. In 1985, it was added to the

. The secondary buildings all have stylistically similar Gothic features. File:Portland Immaculate Conception 01.jpg, View up nave toward the sanctuary File:Portland Immaculate Conception 03.jpg, Organ by Henry Erben (1869) File:Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception - Chapel interior.jpg, Chapel interior File:Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception - Portland, Maine 04.JPG, Guild Hall

References

External links

Official Cathedral Site

Diocese of Portland Official Site
{{National Register of Historic Places Churches in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Maine Gothic Revival church buildings in Maine Roman Catholic churches completed in 1866 19th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in the United States Churches in Portland, Maine Immaculate Conception, Portland 1866 establishments in Maine National Register of Historic Places in Portland, Maine Roman Catholic churches in Maine Cathedrals in Maine

Architecture and history

See also

References

External links