St. James Cathedral is the
mother church
Mother church or matrice is a term depicting the Christian Church as a mother in her functions of nourishing and protecting the believer. It may also refer to the primary church of a Christian denomination or diocese, i.e. a cathedral or a metr ...
of the
Episcopal Church in the United States of America
The Episcopal Church, based in the United States with additional dioceses elsewhere, is a member church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. It is a mainline Protestant denomination and is divided into nine provinces. The presiding bishop o ...
Diocese of Chicago in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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,
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Roc ...
. The cathedral stands at the corner of Huron and Wabash streets. It is the oldest church of the
Anglican Communion
The Anglican Communion is the third largest Christian communion after the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Founded in 1867 in London, the communion has more than 85 million members within the Church of England and oth ...
and Episcopal tradition in the Chicago area, having been founded in 1834.
Originally built as a parish church, that building was mostly destroyed in the
Great Chicago Fire
The Great Chicago Fire was a conflagration that burned in the American city of Chicago during October 8–10, 1871. The fire killed approximately 300 people, destroyed roughly of the city including over 17,000 structures, and left more than 1 ...
. Only the bell tower survived, and this was incorporated into the rebuilt church, including the soot-stained stones around the top of the tower which remain black today. St. James received the status of
cathedral
A cathedral is a church that contains the ''cathedra'' ()