Holy Name Cathedral

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Research record

Holy Name Cathedral · Staged record CTL-PL-0183 · Entity Depth Program · 674 words · Evidence grade: VERIFIED (canonical master, carried unchanged) · Researched 2026-10-25

Some records in this batch required correction before they could be deepened, and this is the clearest case. Holy Name Cathedral stands at 735 North State Street, at the corner of Superior and State in Chicago's Near North Side; it is the central place of worship and the seat of the Archdiocese of Chicago. The address matters because the graph's stored record carried a different number — 733 North State Street — and stored measurements, a height of 254 feet and a period as the city's tallest building dated 1854 to 1869, that describe no cathedral on this site: the present building was constructed in 1874 and dedicated in 1875, and its spire rises 210 feet. The source that verifies this record, Preservation Chicago's coverage of the cathedral's 150th anniversary on November 23, 2025, states the corrected facts plainly, and this entry follows them; the stored values are flagged in the batch index as a master-record conflict for the merge pass.

The building's history begins in fire. The first Holy Name church on the site was consumed by the Great Chicago Fire of 1871; the parish worshipped for four years in a burnt-out house nearby, known in the parish's memory as the "shanty cathedral," while the present cathedral was built to the commission of the Brooklyn architect Patrick Charles Keely, a Gothic Revival design in brick and stone. Structurae's structural record gives the building's dimensions: 233 feet long, 126 feet wide, seating for 1,110, a ceiling seventy feet high, and the 210-foot spire. Its bronze front doors, designed by Albert J. Friscia, weigh 1,200 pounds each. The dedication fell in November 1875 — the structural record gives November 21, 1875, while the anniversary coverage celebrates the 150th on November 23, 2025, a two-day variance this entry records without pretending to settle it.

The cathedral's twentieth century is written on its fabric and its corner. In October 1926 the North Side gang leader Hymie Weiss was murdered across from the cathedral, and the cornerstone still carries bullet marks from that era of Chicago history. In 2008 a ceiling collapse closed the building — the restoration that followed reinstalled the ceiling's 23,000 individual wood pieces — and in February 2009, midway through that repair, a fire broke out and the cathedral reopened later the same year. Inside, the Chicago Architecture Center's building record names the Resurrection Crucifix by the Italian sculptor Ivo Demetz as the interior's commanding work. The cathedral remains the seat of the Archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Blase J. Cupich in the current record.

In the CultureTechLens graph the cathedral is located in Chicago, and it appears on the graph's list of Chicago's tallest buildings — an edge whose stored tallest-building years, 1854 to 1869, predate the present building entirely and cannot describe it; the edge attaches to the site and parish history, not to the 1875 structure, and the index flags the stored years accordingly. What the verified record supports is narrower and stronger: Chicago's Catholic cathedral since 1875, rebuilt from the Fire's ashes on State Street, 210 feet of spire over the Near North Side, and an archdiocesan seat that has now marked a century and a half on the same corner. For CultureTechLens the record carries a second lesson, and it is a Chicago one: the correction itself is now part of the archive. A place record that repeats a wrong address and a borrowed height teaches nothing; a record that states its own correction — 735 North State Street, built 1874, dedicated 1875, spire 210 feet, first church on the site lost to the Fire of 1871 — teaches the method by which the graph is kept. The cathedral's 150th anniversary, marked in November 2025 in the coverage that verifies this entry, found the institution on the same corner where its predecessor burned, still the seat of the Archdiocese of Chicago and still the central place of worship its verifying source names it. That continuity, stated with its dates and its sources, is the whole of what this record claims.

Sources for this record

• Holy Name Cathedral Celebrates Its 150th Anniversary on November 23, 2025 — Preservation Chicago (carrying Chicago Tribune coverage)
  Claims supported: Master verification source: the current cathedral is at 735 N. State Street, corner of Superior and State; central worship place of the Archdiocese of Chicago; built in 1874 and dedicated in 1875; first Holy Name church consumed by the Great Chicago Fire of 1871; spire 210 feet. The stored address (733 N. State), stored height (254 ft) and stored tallest-building period (1854–1869) are NOT supported — flagged in the batch index.
• Holy Name Cathedral — Chicago Architecture Center
  Claims supported: Commission to architect Patrick Charles Keely in 1874; congregation worshipped four years in a burnt-out house ('shanty cathedral'); dedicated 1875; Resurrection Crucifix by Ivo Demetz; ceiling's 23,000 wood pieces reinstalled after the 2008 collapse.
• Holy Name Cathedral — Structurae
  Claims supported: Dedicated November 21, 1875 — a two-day variance against the November 23 anniversary date in the Preservation Chicago headline, flagged in the batch index; 233 ft long, 126 ft wide, seats 1,110, ceiling 70 ft, spire 210 ft; bronze doors by Albert J. Friscia, 1,200 lbs each; Hymie Weiss murdered October 11, 1926, cornerstone bullet marks; 2009 fire, reopened the same year; seat of the Archdiocese of Chicago under Cardinal Blase J. Cupich.

Citations

Published October 25, 2026, from the head-verified staged record in the Entity Depth Program (Batches 004–008). Source: CultureTechLens