The Cathedral Gets a New Ceiling

One more detail from our excursion on the streets of the near North Side last week: Holy Name Cathedral has a new ceiling. New roof, actually, since most of the old one burned away early this year. The church just re-opened a few weeks ago.

But it’s the ceiling that gets your attention – or it should, with 24,000 or so dark brown pieces (of wood?) newly refurbished with a lot of gold leaf. It’s one of the more spectacular church ceilings that I’ve seen, though my own favorite ceiling still remains the byzantine-style New Cathedral of St. Louis with its numerous glittering tesserae. The online version of the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia says the structure, brand new when the article was written, features 41.5 million pieces in more than 7,000 colors. One of these days I need to make it to Ravenna or Constantinople to see how actual byzantine mosaics compare.

A few blocks away is St. James Episcopal Cathedral. After Holy Name, we walked to it, but was too late in the afternoon to enter. I toyed with the idea of going over the Michigan Avenue to take a look at Fourth Presbyterian, another marvel of a Chicago church in the Gothic Revival style, but I was getting complains of tired feet from small walkers, so we made our way back to Union Station.