Gothic Pride: The Story of Building a Great Cathedral in Newark

O’Rourke in Washington

Jeremiah O’Rourke became supervising architect of the United States in 1893. He had a rocky time in the post, and several episodes during this public service (as well as other interactions with the supervising architect ’s oªce) elucidated his professional motivations and personal character. O’Rourke’s interlude in Washington bears closer scrutiny than would ordinarily be called for here because of its value in interpreting a later turning point in the history of the cathedral. As his career advanced, O’Rourke rose to prominence in Newark, taking his father-in-law’s seat on the board of managers of the Howard Savings Institution and as a trustee of the cathedral parish and other institutions.1 In his sixtieth year, his long-standing loyalty to the Democratic Party and professional competence put him within reach of the position of supervising architect. Supervising Architect of the United States The supervising architect’s role grew out of the national government’s need to manage federal buildings projects: post oªces, courthouses, customs houses, and the like. Its responsibilities were formalized in the 1850s as a bureau or department under the secretary of the treasury. When O’Rourke set his sights on the oªce, in 1893, it had been entered through a revolving door for a decade. Party politics unseated previous recent incumbents and created the vacancy that he wanted to fill. He seized his chance when political heavyweight (and, often noted, an enormously heavy man) James J. Smith, a newly elected United States senator, fellow Newarker, and 8 O’Rourke in Washington 67 parishioner of Saint Patrick’s, promoted his candidacy to John G. Carlisle, the treasury secretary in Grover Cleveland’s second administration. Jeremiah O’Rourke viewed American politics as two polarities: Democrats were selfless and devoted to the public good; Republicans were selfserving and corrupt. He always had political views, and everyone within earshot knew them. But this now seemed to be paying o¤ in a way that he could scarcely have predicted. Peers in the American Institute of Architects (AIA) raised an eyebrow that someone who had been a sole practitioner doing mostly ecclesiastical commissions was under consideration. But this did not deter O’Rourke or Senator Smith’s Democratic machine. For O’Rourke, it was the realization of an American Dream whose prize was professional eminence. And in dreaming about it, he would have had in mind the extraordinary, hyperbolic claim made in the American Architect and Building News six years before: “[T]o the future historian of American art, the succession of Government Architects will be nearly as important as that of the kings of England in British secular history.”2 O’Rourke left his Newark oªce without regret, saying later, “had I foreseen that I would have died in the poorhouse, I would have accepted for the sake of my native land and my religion.”3 Lifted from a narrow prominence , O’Rourke eventually received a nod from the American Architect and Building News, when the editor noted that his selection “will be accepted by the profession as a more than usually satisfactory appointment, as the new incumbent is known generally as an architect of more than average capacity and information, who, during the last twenty years, has enjoyed a larger practice than has fallen to most of his fellows. The fact that the greater portion of this practice has consisted in the construction of ecclesiastical buildings of various kinds for the Roman Catholic Church does not, under the changed conditions attending the design of Government buildings , a¤ect the propriety of the appointment.”4 These “changed conditions,” a sudden shift in architectural taste, and internal politics in the Treasury Department and the supervising architect’s oªce blew arctic headwinds at the new appointee. Prominence and Politics The year 1893 unfolded as a watershed in the history of American architecture . A fantastic fair in Chicago marked the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America. The World’s Columbian Exposition, as it was called, drew more than 27 million visitors to its pavilions, halls, 68 Interludes and monumental water features, many designed by a rising generation of American architects influenced by the classicism taught at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. The pageantry of this world’s fair and its showcase of colonnades and capitals, pediments and architraves helped make BeauxArts classicism the new cynosure...