The walls of The Cathedral of All Saints, in medieval design, are entirely upheld by flying buttresses.
The Right Reverend William Croswell Doane (1832-1913), first Bishop of Albany, and visionary builder of The Cathedral of All Saints.
The Pioneer Cathedral
The Cathedral of All Saints is the principal structure in America built to serve as an Episcopal cathedral modeled on Anglican cathedrals of Great Britain, supporting a cathedral church, school for girls, hospital, convent, orphanage, and industrial school from its inception. Its first bishop, William Croswell Doane (1832-1913), wanted an “instantly ancient” medieval cathedral for the new Albany diocese, created by a division of the Episcopal Diocese of New York in 1868.
When a competition for an architect was held, Robert Wilson Gibson was selected for his Gothic Revival design. The Cathedral is currently only forty-percent finished, not unlike its European medieval counterparts which may be built over centuries. The Cathedral was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. Previously it had been recognized as contributing to the Lafayette Park Historic District, the area surrounding the NY State Capitol building.
A photo from 1878 of St. Agnes School for girls. The school moved and merged with a Catholic school in 1975 and became the Doane Stuart School, now an interfaith school in Rensselaer, NY. The original Cathedral campus included the Cathedral and Guild House buildings, still extant on the south side of Elk St., the school, Child’s Hospital, and a Deanery.
St. Agnes School: Alice Morgan Wright
St. Agnes’s School, founded by Bishop Doane in 1870, graduated Alice Morgan Wright (1881-1975) in 1903. Eleanor Roosevelt was a friend and frequent visitor to Wright’s home on State Street, which had been designed by Gibson for Wright’s father. Wright rose to prominence in the women’s suffrage movement and was one of the founding members of the American League of Women Voters. An important sculptor, Wright exhibited in the controversial New York Armory Show of 1912 and exerted a strong influence on cubism in the United States. In later life she became a prominent animal rights activist.
Gilded Age Philanthropy: J.P. Morgan and Erastus Corning
Bishop Doane relied on Erastus Corning to secure the land for the Cathedral, which will never fill its envisioned footprint due to the NY State Education Building being erected around it in 1908, while Bishop Doane was overseas. It is believed that Doane relied on his close friend J. P. Morgan to fund much of the Cathedral’s interior. Other well-known figures from the Gilded Age donated to the project, often in the form of memorials.
The “Gilded Age,” a period that spanned the 1870’s to the twentieth century, is a term coined by Mark Twain to signify the new wealth of a few covering a society of ills. The Cathedral of All Saints—its structure and its missions—were envisioned by design to glorify God through art and service funded by those who wanted to be remembered not only for their wealth, but also for their charity, love of God, and their support of the arts and Christian education.
Art Made in Memory: The Hintons and Spencer Trask
The Cathedral’s pillars, altars, baptistery, and monuments were carved by a chief stone carver of the NY State Capitol Building’s great western staircase, Louis J. Hinton (1845-1931) with some help from his son, the sculptor Charles Hinton, over a period of forty years. As celebrants and servers walk to the high altar to offer Mass today, they pass two delicately carved stems of wheat on the pillar facing the sacristy—a memorial to the two young children of John Snaith, “builder of the Cathedral.”
The choir—the area surrounding the high altar—is thought to have been completed with a donation by J.P. Morgan. The carved wood backing to its stalls come from a 17th century Belgian church and was donated by Spencer Trask, the railroad magnate, NY Times chairman and philanthropist, in memory of his young son Alanson, as the carved pillar behind the choir explains.
Trask and his wife, the writer Katrina Nichols Trask, were predeceased by all four of their children. After both of thier deaths, thier home, Yaddo, in Saratoga Springs, became an artists’ residency. Yaddo’s founding document exemplifies the spirit that seems to also speak from the Cathedral’s many memorials for the young: "Because God in his infinite wisdom saw fit to take all our children to a larger place, we cannot see it fit to limit [what we have] to one person....."
From Children to Mayors, Governors and Presidents
The Cathedral’s carved memorials to children appear on its pillars in apparent equanimity with memorials for several governors of New York State, including Governors Throop, Fish, Seymour and Dix. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt were congregants of the Cathedral while FDR was governor of New York, as was Nelson Rockefeller. Mayor Erastus Corning II was an active member of the Cathedral along with his wife, Elizabeth, who was a member of the altar guild.
As a member of the altar guild, Elizabeth Corning created textile art which includes a tapestry hanging in the south transept showing Albany’s Capitol Hill area with the Cathedral as the focal point.
Today and Yesterday
The Cathedral of All Saints was built to welcome as many people as came to it. Its story is made of many personal stories of ambition, loss, love and faith. Sustained by grace through the gifts and labor of many over the years who maintain it in its glorious, Gothic Revival and semi-finished state, it belongs to the people of Albany and all who would visit.
Still home to a worshiping congregation, the Cathedral continues to find its identity in and through the arts. While The Cathedral Choir has sung continuously since 1872 and offers choral services and concerts to this day, the Cathedral’s mission in the arts is expressed new ways such as Cathedral in Bloom, the Capitol Region’s new premier flower show, and through various projects of Cathedral Arts.
Perhaps best known outside of Albany for his hymn, “Ancient of Days,” The Cathedral of All Saints’ first bishop still maintains a presence at the Cathedral. Bishop Doane’s bones—along with those of his wife, sister-in-law, and possibly his beloved St. Bernard, Clooney—are buried in the middle of the floor of the Cathedral’s ambulatory—otherwise known as the “Hall of Bishops”—where portraits of Albany’s bishops gaze down on choristers walking from lessons in the Song School, as they have since the Cathedral was built.
