Title: History - Basilica of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral & Church of the Most Precious Blood - New York, NY
Headings: 
History
New York’s First Cathedral: The Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral
Historical Highlights

Content: The small Catholic population only gained esteem in 1674, when King James II (a Roman Catholic convert) granted religious liberty to the province which still lacked a its own place of worship. In 1683, King James II appointed an Irish Catholic Colonel Thomas Dongan to govern New York under his “Charter of Liberties and Privileges” which granted religious freedom to all Christians. However, the fall of the Catholic Stuarts in England due to the Protestant “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 drove Dongan from his post, ending the brief religious liberty in the province and ushering in a law in 1700 that prohibited Catholic priests from entering the city as per the provincial assembly. Despite these restrictions, Jesuit Ferdinand Steenmayer snuck into the city to celebrate Mass in secret on several brave occasions. Upon the anti-Catholic law being repealed (1784) in the now sovereign state of New York, an Irish Capuchin friar Charles Whelan arrived in the city to help organize what would become the first Catholic parish in the independent United States. New York’s Catholic community numbered less than 1,000 of the total 230,000 populating the land from French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Irish descent. Nevertheless, the Roman Catholic Church in the City of New York was incorporated in 1785, led by the French consul and largely financed by a donation from King Charles III of Spain. Construction then commenced on the first Catholic house of worship in the city - St. Peter’s Church. Opening Mass was celebrated on November 1, 1786, in the small, Georgian- style building located on the corner of Barclay and Church streets in lower Manhattan. Severely damaged in the Great Fire of 1835 (a conflagration that raged for three days and destroyed 674 buildings), the original wood frame building was replaced in 1840 by the present monumental granite structure, designed in the classicaltradition.