Founded in 1832 as the first Catholic Church in New Haven and the second oldest Catholic parish in Connecticut, St. Mary Church is today renowned as the founding church of the Knights of Columbus and the final resting place of their founder, Father Michael J. McGivney (1852-1890). While assistant pastor at St. Mary (1878-1884), Fr. McGivney held an organizational meeting on October 2, 1881 for what would become the official incorporation of the Knights of Columbus on March 29, 1882. Intended as a local fraternal group to strengthen the faith of men and care for the widowed of the parish, the Knights of Columbus has grown to an international philanthropic and advocacy organization.
Father McGivney portrait by Robert Whitney
On March 29, 1982, to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Knights, the remains of Fr McGivney were moved from a family plot in Old St. Joseph Cemetery in Waterbury, CT to be re-entombed in a granite sarcophagus in St. Mary Church. Since then, Fr. McGivney’s cause for canonization was opened on December 18, 1997, and he was beatified on October 31, 2020. In advance of this momentous event, John Canning Co. beautified and elevated the interior decoration of St Mary Church to be proportionate to the exalted status of the most beloved priest in New Haven history.
St. Mary is now the anchor church of Blessed Michael McGivney Parish and the site of the pilgrimage shrine and national memorial for Blessed McGivney. However, much like the ambitions of Fr. McGivney, the history of St. Mary began small but with bold ambition. From as early as 1651 there had been a transient presence of Catholic priests in New Haven, but it was not until 1832 that the first resident pastor, Fr. James McDermott, arrived in the city and bought land on the corner of York and Davenport Streets for a permanent church construction. (William Byrne, History of the Catholic Church in the New England States, vol. 2, Boston: 189, p. 324, 328). The first church building, a small, wooden frame structure, dedicated as Christ’s Church, served a community of 300 adult Catholics. (Byrne p. 330) This was destroyed by fire June 11, 1848, and a new parish church was dedicated on December 18, 1848 as St. Mary. (Byrne p. 334) By the 1860s, confirmation classes at St. Mary now numbered 300 (Joseph W. Duffy, Hartford’s Catholic Legacy: Parishes, Archdiocese of Hartford, 1994, p. 296). A rapidly growing parish in a locale that had become increasingly commercial prompted the search for a new site for St. Mary. On June 15, 1868 property for the future church was secured on Hillhouse Avenue, the “patrician stronghold of New Haven.” (Elizabeth Mills Brown, New Haven: A Guide to Architecture and Urban Design, Yale UP, 1976, p. 137)
Left: Map of New Haven, CT ca. 1879 Right: Detail of Hillhouse Ave and the Back of the Church
Images Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Hillhouse Avenue was at this time reputed to be the most beautiful street in America. Elizabeth Mills Brown in her guide to the architecture of New Haven describes the parklike effect of the avenue in the nineteenth century as one of “majestic width” with a median planted with trees. The grand homes, set back 50 feet from the avenue, were designed in the Greek Revival style, “pale and luminous” in color. (Brown p. 136) The plan for the new St. Mary Church was intended to equal the architectural magnificence of is neighbors. However, when it was finally dedicated on October 23, 1874, its Gothic Revival façade of blue stone trimmed in contrasting light gray granite would speak more to the fashion of the industrial age at the end of the nineteenth century than the restrained classicism of the Protestant establishment. The arrival of the lively Irish-American Catholic church to Hillhouse Avenue made a bold aesthetic statement.
The architect responsible for bringing Gothic to Hillhouse was James Murphy (1834-1907). A member (1870-1902) and fellow (1885) of the American Institute of Architects, Murphy began his career as an apprentice and later partner of Patrick C. Keely (1816-1896), the dominant architect of Catholic churches at the time and the architect responsible for standardizing Catholic church design. (Julie Taylor, “The Gothic Revival in Nineteenth Century Catholic America: Patrick Charles Keely [1816-1896] and His Extensive Contribution,” SN Social Sciences, vol. 2:172 (2022) p. 2). Keely came of age in Ireland after the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 when the penal legislation that harassed Catholics since the Reformation finally came to an end. As the resultant massive Catholic building campaigns unfolded, Keely would have witnessed the development of Irish Catholic architecture from the largely barn-like buildings and stone chapels of the age of Catholic disenfranchisement to the increasingly dominant style of the new era: Gothic Revival. In the same way, Keely’s work in the United States marked a move from the plain wooden churches of the 1840s to “handsome structures of stone” in the Gothic style, a style that was quickly being understood as synonymous with “church style.” (Taylor p. 9, 67) Carrying on the influence of his training under Keely, Murphy created a design for the new St. Mary Church in the most modern and morally respectable style, equal in elegance yet unmistakably in contrast with the antiquated classicism displayed along Hillhouse Avenue.
Historic Photo of St. Mary Nave
The interior of St. Mary was also designed with a wealth of ornate Gothic architectural detail, which, from the earliest days, was enriched with painted decoration. Over the years, as restoration work and regular maintenance demanded, multiple decorative schemes were employed, each successive program largely covering that which preceded it. The most recent project was prompted when a large piece of plaster fell from the ceiling during a Sunday Mass in February 2019. The resident Dominican friars, the religious order which served the parish 1886-2021, reached out to John Canning Co. first to consult on the plaster stabilization and then to commission a beautification project that would restore and enhance the earliest identifiable decoration. With significant financial support from the Knights of Columbus, the project began. The Canning team performed a comprehensive historic paint analysis and historical research to provide a robust understanding of the nineteenth-century decorative work that would inform all creative decisions moving forward, including color choices, stenciled patterns, and devotional imagery. The intention was to honor the legacy of the church’s architectural and artistic designs while also integrating the devotional affections and aesthetic preferences of the present.
The atmosphere as well as the aesthetic of the St. Mary interior today, as in the past, is palpably Gothic. Entering from the busy and bright streets of New Haven, the mood shifts to one of hushed solemnity. The space is dimly lit by the warm glow of the lanterns hanging between the piers, sunlight filtered through the stained glass, and the flickering flames of the devotional candles. The deep, rich carved wooden pews in the nave and aisles and chevron parquet floor lend a grounded feeling to the congregants’ seating. By contrast, the surrounding architectural elements and colors give a sense of quick ascent. The nave arcade is composed of seven slender compound piers and a final pilaster at either side of the chancel. These are painted a reddish brown and topped with extravagantly foliated silver capitals banded by gilded moldings. Springing from the capitals are tall pointed arches, which both emphasize the sense of verticality and frame the pointed moldings of the stained-glass windows on the aisle walls. The pointed arch, hallmark of the Gothic style since the 12th century, informs the spirit of the building.
Beautified Interior of St. Mary
A specifically 19th-century “Revival” Gothic style is evoked by the patterned borders, especially on the side aisle walls. The stenciled lily with quatrefoil border above the wainscot was drawn directly from Canning’s investigation of an early decorative campaign. Above this and between the stained-glass windows, the Stations of the Cross stand in relief, their creamy plaster frames set off by the palest olive green of the wall. Framing these wall segments is a repeating fleur-de-lis and cross patterned border with a Marian monogram at each corner. Similarly, the intrados, or underside, of each arch in the nave arcade is decorated with a border of repeating cross and Marian monograms. In all of these borders, the use of earthy tones of blue, red, green, and brown is a historically accurate reflection of the preferred palette of the later 19th century yet is also appealing to contemporary tastes in its muted sophistication. As David Riccio, principal of Canning has said, the colors “appear timeless but not outdated.” (Joseph Pronechan, “A Visit to St. Mary Church, First Parish of Blessed Michael McGivney, National Catholic Register, November 7, 2020, online.)
Side Aisle Wall Detail
Treatment of the nave and side aisle vaults was again a sensitive refashioning of the past. Paint analysis showed that the vault panels, the planes between the ribs, were painted blue from as early as the 1880s while earliest photographic evidence from the 1920s revealed these areas to be highly decorated. Canning chose to retain the blue ground, suggestive of the heavens above, but to simplify the decorative elements to an elegant scalloped pale blue border along each vault panel, edged with a delicate, gold fleur-de-lis chain. The intricate, gilded vault ribbing stands prominently against these spaces, and the heavily foliated, gilt bosses located at the intersection of the ribs are equally striking against the refined blue ground. Canning’s restoration enriched the ceiling while maintaining a refined clarity of the elements.
Below the lateral ceiling vaults on the walls above each arch of the nave arcade are located the newly commissioned saint portraits. These tondos, or circular paintings, created by Canning, feature traditional saints such as St. Rose of Lima, Dominican saints such as St. Catherine of Siena, and contemporary saints such as Pope St. John Paul II. The range of portrait subjects reflect the sacred foundations as well as the newer devotional fervors of the parish. Within each tondo each stoic portrait figure stares out into the church from a gold plane like an icon while the painted foliate frame of each corresponds to the richly adorned brackets that terminate the descending vault ribs. Suspended on the walls well above the piers, these ribs are not structural like their medieval precedents but strictly ornamental. This combination of devotional imagery and pure decoration demonstrates the ambition of the Gothic Revival interior to convey its beauty and its contrast to the world outside.
Nave Wall and Tondos
This ambition reaches its culmination in the richly decorated chancel. Here the raised altar is framed by the grand, pointed chancel arch. Two slim blue columns at either side enclose a gold panel dotted with silver roses, symbols of Mary. Like the nave arches, the intrados of the chancel arch is decorated with a repeating pattern of crosses and the IHS, the sacred monogram of Jesus Christ. Above the paneling on the back chancel wall are large panels painted with a fleur-di-lis and rose pattern in a pinkish-red in imitation of an embossed brocade wall covering. Above this a string course supports the chancel clerestory, the windows surrounded by a diaper pattern on a paler tone of the painted panels below. Slender compound piers with their silver foliated capitals support the gilded ribs of the vault. These stand out boldly against the deep blue panels embellished by serpentine scrolling foliage in silver, this again a return to an early decorative campaign discovered by Canning during historic analysis.
Finally, in the three central bays of the clerestory above the windows are newly commissioned paintings of the archangels: St. Michael at center flanked by St. Gabriel on the left and St. Raphael on the right. Like the portraits of the saints in the nave, the archangels stare out to the church like icons, stoic in demeanor. Clouds billow about the figures, and golden banners announcing Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, unfurl below them. Here the complete ornamentation of the chancel emphasizes the sacred preeminence of the space while the overflowing attention to beauty in all its details is itself a devotional act in honor and celebration of the church’s patron, St. Mary.
Left: Closeup of IHS Monogram in the Arches Right: Three Angels in the Apse
Parishioners returned to the restored and elevated St. Mary Church in September 2020 and a month later celebrated the beatification of their own Fr. Michael McGivney. From its beginnings as a small parish celebrating Mass in a wooden church to its construction of a modern Gothic Revival church in the most aristocratic and classical neighborhood in New Haven, St. Mary Church was bold in its ambition. From its dedication in 1874 to today, it has always valued ornament and beauty as conveyors of theology and devotion.
In 2021 John Canning Co.’s restoration and beautification project at St. Mary won the Bulfinch Award for Craftsmanship/Artisanship presented by the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art. This recognition surely is the validation for St. Mary Church that, at least for this time in its history, the ambition of beauty has indeed won the day.
Written By Amy Marie Zucca, Ph.D.
Amy Zucca is the resident art historian for John Canning & Co. and Canning Liturgical Arts. With a doctorate in art history and a specialization in the Italian Renaissance, Amy brings historic insight to our projects, new art commissions and design work for the company.
