As America approached the apogee of the Gilded Age in 1900, its Episcopal elite appeared to undergo a major meltdown. Their position seemed unassailable. Numbering only 720,000, Episcopalians represented less than one percent of the United States population of 76 million. Yet, they controlled much of the nation’s corporate wealth, political power, and social status. Their mansions lined Upper Fifth Avenue in New York, Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, and Beacon Hill in Boston. The Social Register dripped with such Episcopal names as Astor, Vanderbilt, Cabot, Lodge, Biddle, and Cadwalader.

However, American Catholics, bolstered by waves of European immigration, numbered 12 million in 1900, making them the largest religious denomination in America. Catholics’ vast numbers and growing financial power, along with their fervent religious devotion, had manifested itself in the construction of magnificent cathedrals. A cathedral was not only the principal church of a diocese where its bishop was seated, but a highly visible statement of economic and social status.

In New York City, “the Cathedral” meant St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Completed in 1879, its Gothic spires towered above the Episcopal enclave of Fifth Avenue. In Philadelphia, “the Cathedral” referred to the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, which had dominated Logan Square since 1864. Its stately dome overshadowed not just the colonial steeples of Christ Church and St. Peter’s, but 19th century Holy Trinity and St. Mark’s. Where were the great Episcopal cathedrals, the New World counterparts to majestic St. Paul’s in London?

As if to reassert their religious dominance, American Episcopalians embarked on a wave of cathedral building unmatched since the Middle Ages. On December 27, 1892, the cornerstone was set for the massive Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Upper Manhattan. On September 29, 1907, Episcopal President Theodore Roosevelt laid the cornerstone for a National Cathedral atop Mount St. Albans, the highest point in Washington. Nominally a “house of prayer for all people,” the structure would serve as headquarters for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, reflecting the marriage of the national power structure and the Episcopal faith. Before long, Baltimore, Boston, and San Francisco announced plans for their own Episcopal cathedrals.

Philadelphia, birthplace of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, was slower to join the Cathedral Crusade. Ozi William Whitaker, Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania from 1887 to 1911, was adamantly anti-cathedral. He preferred to use an existing institution like Christ Church, where the Founding Fathers had worshipped, as the bishop’s seat for the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, which is composed of Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties.

When the George W. South Memorial Church of the Advocate opened its doors at 18th and Diamond Streets in 1897, Philadelphia’s Episcopalians seemed to have found their cathedral. Designed by Charles Marquedant Burns, the Church of the Advocate was the largest and most elaborate Episcopal church in the city. Measuring 170 feet long and 110 feet wide at its transepts, and seating 1,500, the church was considered the de facto Episcopal Cathedral of Pennsylvania.

Nevertheless, the lure of a custom-built, Center City cathedral continued to tempt Episcopalians. By 1910, the North Philadelphia neighborhood around the Church of the Advocate had become a congested, working-class community. Philip M. Rhinelander, Whitaker’s successor as Episcopal Bishop, was sympathetic to a new cathedral, especially as St. John the Divine took shape in Manhattan.

In 1913, Bishop Rhinelander met with members of Philadelphia’s Episcopal elite, including George Wharton Pepper, Samuel Frederic Houston, and Eli Kirk Price II, to form a Cathedral Foundation. A charter was drawn up for the “Protestant-Episcopal Cathedral Church of Christ.” In 1916, the Fairmount Park Commission, under the direction of Eli Kirk Price, allotted a site for the cathedral on the north side of the Fairmount Parkway between 21st and 22nd Streets, the site of the current-day Rodin Museum.

A grand Episcopal Cathedral was an integral factor in the Fairmount Parkway (today the Benjamin Franklin Parkway), laid out by Paul Philippe Cret in 1907 and later modified by Jacques Gréber. Before the Parkway opened in 1918, Cret and Gréber had drafted plans depicting it as Philadelphia’s Champs-Elysées. Lined with neoclassical buildings housing the city’s major institutions, the Parkway would culminate in a palatial museum of art atop Fairmount Plateau.

Among its landmarks would be the Episcopal Cathedral. Gréber’s elevations depicted a structure in the Byzantine style, flanked by a soaring campanile. Its elongated dome evoked the new Basilique du Sacré-Coeur de Montmartre in Paris. From 1917 through 1924, outdoor summer church services were held on the site, attracting between 200 and 400 worshippers each Sunday.

In 1923, Thomas J. Garland succeeded Rhinelander as Bishop. While Garland supported the cathedral, he was less enthusiastic about its proposed location. The rise in automotive traffic meant increasing noise and congestion along the Parkway. More importantly, affluent Philadelphians, including many Episcopalians, were fleeing Center City for outlying enclaves like Chestnut Hill and the Main Line.

On December 2, 1926, the Philadelphia Inquirer announced the Episcopal Diocese had acquired over 100 acres in rural Upper Roxborough from the Henry H. Houston estate. The new cathedral site was bounded by Hagys Mill Road on its west, Ridge Avenue on the east, and Manatawna Avenue on the north. Garland explained that while the site was currently meadow and woodland, suburban expansion would make it the geographic center of the Diocese within a decade.

More importantly, the proposed Chestnut Hill-Bryn Mawr Boulevard would run along the southern edge of the site. This road would originate in Ardmore, cross the Schuylkill River, Upper Roxborough and Wissahickon Creek, and traverse Chestnut Hill before connecting with Bethlehem Pike and Lincoln Drive. Nicknamed “the Social Highway,” the boulevard would link nearly every upscale community west of Center City, from the Main Line to Old York Road. It would provide the perfect conduit for the affluent Episcopalians Bishop Garland hoped would finance and fill the pews of his cathedral. Designed by Paul Philippe Cret, the boulevard was under consideration by the Philadelphia City Council with approval expected soon.

The sale was a coup for Samuel F. Houston, who owned thousands of undeveloped acres throughout Upper Roxborough. In 1921, he had lobbied unsuccessfully for Philadelphia to use these lands for the 1926 Sesquicentennial International Exposition. Houston, a leader in the Cathedral Chapter, donated the four acres of land on which the Cathedral proper would stand. The remaining 96 acres cost the Episcopal Diocese approximately $500,000.

Houston was the son of Pennsylvania Railroad executive Henry H. Houston, the largest landowner in Northwest Philadelphia. After convincing his railroad to extend a line to the western side of Chestnut Hill in the 1880s, Henry created the model suburb of St. Martin’s, complete with Episcopal church, private school, cricket club, and dozens of upscale homes. Samuel Houston had hoped to emulate his father’s accomplishment in Upper Roxborough with minimal success to date. Yet, the realization of both the cathedral and the Social Highway would surely transform his fields and forests into a second Chestnut Hill.

On May 22, 1927, the first open-air worship service was held in Roxborough. A crowd of 4,000 heard Bishop Garland envision “a noble and majestic cathedral crowning a lofty eminence, its stately spires silhouetted against the sky.” Standing 400 feet above sea level, the cathedral would anchor a vast campus containing dozens of ancillary buildings. A traffic circle at the intersection of Ridge Avenue, Henry Avenue, and a new Cathedral Avenue would channel worshippers into the beautifully landscaped grounds.

The firm of Watson, Edkins & Thompson, specialists in ecclesiastic architecture, was engaged to design the project. In 1929, they unveiled plans for the world’s biggest Gothic cathedral. The cruciform structure with an exterior of local Wissahickon schist would extend nearly 1,000 feet along its east-west axis. A square bell tower would soar 300 feet over the central crossing, visible for miles, while a 220-foot tower would rise above the apse.

In June 1932, ground was broken for the Cathedral Church of Christ. Construction began at once on St. Mary’s Chapel, the smallest section at the eastern end of the apse. This unit had been funded by a bequest from the estate of Annie Masden Vaughan Watson as a tribute to her mother. Watson, wife of a U.S. Congressman, had left over $100,000 to build a memorial chapel in South Philadelphia when she died in 1915. Bishop Garland had persuaded her heirs to donate the funds to the Roxborough Cathedral instead.

If not for the Watson bequest, nothing might have been built on the site. By 1932, the Great Depression had paralyzed the nation. Even the mighty Episcopal Church struggled to remain solvent. Bishop Francis M. Taitt, who succeeded Thomas Garland in 1931, recommended the cathedral project be shelved for 20 years. However, construction continued, and the first service of Evening Prayer was held in St. Mary’s Chapel on December 8, 1933. It was a candlelight service, since the electricity was not yet working.

In 1935, the Cathedral Building Committee issued a new design reducing the size of the structure by nearly one-half. The revised format eliminated most of the surrounding buildings and apse tower, and replaced the square central tower with a lower octagonal lantern modeled on Ely Cathedral. By this time, the church had defaulted on its mortgage and forfeited 34 acres back to the Houston estate, reducing the size of its property to roughly 70 acres.

Work ground to a halt after the construction of St. Michael’s Chapel on the south side of St. Mary’s Chapel in 1938. America’s entry into World War II guaranteed that nothing would be built “for the duration.” The western end of the truncated structure was walled in with a temporary facing of corrugated steel that would remain in place for four decades. Despite its fragmentary status, the structure was still referred to as “the Cathedral.” Before long, it became the final resting place of Bishops Thomas Garland and Francis Taitt.  

When prosperity returned after World War II, the original cathedral developers were either elderly or dead. Plans for the Social Highway had been suspended, and would be scrapped in 1959. Only a one-mile stretch named Cathedral Road was built between the cathedral property and Wissahickon Valley Park. On the east side of Ridge Avenue, Cathedral Road was surrounded by a suburban development originally called Cathedral Hills, but later named Andorra.

In the 1950s, there was discussion of resuming construction, and a Chapter House was erected on the north side of St. Mary’s Chapel. Yet, the Episcopal Church was shifting its focus from cathedrals to social reform. In 1977, the Diocese announced plans to build a $22 million retirement community named Cathedral Village on the land surrounding St. Mary’s Chapel. “The retirement village means that the cathedral never will be completed,” a diocesan spokesman confirmed. “We feel we can do much more for mankind by taking care of its needs.”

During the same period, the Episcopal Diocese sold the western half of its property above Hagys Mill Road to private developers. Roughly 100 homes were constructed along a network of ecclesiastically named streets including Steeple Drive, Belfry Drive, and Prelate Circle.

In 1987, Edward R. Watson of Mirick Pearson Batcheler redesigned St. Mary’s as a parish church seating 50. The metal shield on its west end was replaced with a tinted glass wall, and a temporary narthex used as the main entrance was demolished. A large assembly room named Cathedral Hall was constructed between the cathedral and the main entrance to Cathedral Village, along with covered walkways connecting the church and retirement home.

Following the latest trends in church design, St. Mary’s traditional altar, baptismal font, and pews were replaced with modern furnishings. The clear windows of the sanctuary were exchanged for contemporary designs by Charles Z. Lawrence of Willets Stained Glass Studio. Architect Watson discovered that in the haste to finish the chapel in the 1930s, some stones of the vaulted ceiling had been laid in place with wadded newspapers instead of mortar. For nearly 50 years, St. Mary’s parishioners had been at risk of being crushed by falling masonry.

In 1992, the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania established its current cathedral at the former Church of the Saviour at 38th and Chestnut Streets in West Philadelphia. The Romanesque Revival brownstone church, originally designed by Samuel Sloan, opened in 1855, but was substantially rebuilt after a 1902 fire. Supported by the wealthy Drexel family, the church interior boasted elaborate murals, decorated walls, and a baptismal font of translucent Mexican onyx.

Since its designation, the Episcopal Cathedral has courted architectural controversy several times. In 2001, then-cathedral Dean Richard Giles undertook a radical “re-ordering” of the interior. The altar, pews, and other furnishings were replaced by modern fittings, while many of the murals and wall decorations were concealed. A decade later, the cathedral sold its parish house and rectory, listed on both the National and the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places. The properties were replaced by a 25-story luxury apartment tower, 3737 Chestnut, which included facilities for diocesan use. Proceeds from the sale were used to repair and stabilize the cathedral’s bell tower.

Today, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Andorra ministers to the Episcopal community of Upper Roxborough. Besides its Gothic exterior and older stained-glass windows by D’Ascenzo Studios, a few traces of the cathedral-that-might-have-been linger in corners of the church. Outside the building’s eastern end, a massive bell weighing over a ton hangs from a steel girder. Seven smaller bells rest in the basement. All were cast at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in London, where the original Liberty Bell was cast in 1752. They are part of a chime of 12 bells that once hung in the tower of the Episcopal Church of St. Matthias at 19th and Wallace Streets. When St. Matthias relocated to West Oak Lane in 1943, the congregation gifted their bells to St. Mary’s, hopeful that they would one day ring out from the tower of the finished cathedral.

The beautiful detailing of St. Michael’s Chapel gives some indication of how the entire cathedral might have appeared had it been finished. A stained-glass triptych showing St. Michael defeating Satan dominates the space. An intricately carved stone altar fills the eastern end, while gilded and enameled bosses shine from the ribs of the vaulted ceiling. The crypt stones of Samuel F. Houston (died 1952) and his second wife Charlotte (died 1940) take up most of the floor.

Across the road, a portrait of Samuel Houston by Alice Kent Stoddard hangs in a corner of the lobby of Cathedral Village. Damaged and worn, the Houston portrait goes unnoticed by most Village residents. It serves as an apt analogy for the entwined social and religious aspirations of Philadelphia’s vanished Episcopal elite, who a century ago dreamt of raising the greatest Gothic cathedral in the world high above the Schuylkill River.

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The author wishes to thank the Reverend Peter Carey, Rector of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, for his generous help in researching this article.

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