St. Mary's Seminary Chapel
About this property
St. Mary's Seminary Chapel is a Catholic church located at 600 North Paca Street (off Druid Hill Avenue and modern Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard) in the Seton Hill neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland. It was built in the Neo-Gothic style. It was built from 1806 through 1808 by French architect J. Maximilian M. Godefroy for the French Sulpician priests of St. Mary's Seminary. Godefroy claimed that his design was the first Gothic building in America. St. Mary's Seminary (now St. Mary's Seminary and University), founded in 1791, is the oldest Catholic seminary in the United States and the site also included a secular St. Mary's College, from 1805-1852. Godefroy also designed in Baltimore, the First Unitarian Church at West Franklin and North Charles Streets during 1817 and the Battle Monument, constructed 1815-1822 in the old Courthouse Square at North Calvert Street, between East Lexington and East Fayette Streets, commemorating the city's dead during the British attack in the War of 1812's Battle of Baltimore with the bombardment of Fort McHenry and the Battle of North Point in September 1814. The chapel is located adjacent to the Mother Seton House. Originally the chapel was surrounded by a quadrangle of four-story buildings of brick Georgian/Federal design with peaked roofs and dormer windows. On one side was a long seminary building and on the other was an L-shaped larger, but similar architectured structure built for the secular College, after it was established in 1805. These were later replaced on the same site by buildings in 1876-78 of Victorian/Second Empire style with mansard roofs although the central chapel of Godefroy endured. In the 1970s, the Victorian buildings were unfortunately also razed leaving St. Mary's Park with a historic bandstand to now surround the old Chapel and Mother Seton House. To the east in the 1980s was constructed a four-lane landscaped parkway with median strip of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, edged by short brick retaining walls which curved around the west side of downtown Baltimore like an inner "beltway". The small, brick chapel, measuring approximately 90 feet (27 m) long by 70 feet (21 m) wide, is one and a half stories high, set on a high basement. A false front braced by small flying buttresses rises above the main roof, the result of economy measures that lowered the roof below the level of the intended rose window. A tower, statuary and stained glass in the front windows were also cut. The round arched windows are set in rectangular openings. The bricks were originally made for architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe's Baltimore Cathedral/Basilica of the Assumption of Mary (constructed 1806-1821), but it was eventually built of stone blocks. This was the first Catholic cathedral constructed in America to serve the new Archdiocese of Baltimore. The bricks were then purchased for this project for $3,000.00, contributed by Charles Carroll of Carrollton, (1737-1832), last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence and at one time the richest man in America. A stucco cornice lines the sides of the chapel. The interior comprises a wide nave flanked by narrow side aisles. Nine aisle column bays frame three sets of stained glass windows on each side. A sanctuary is set 18 inches (0.46 m) higher than the nave, flanked by transepts on either side and ending in a small semicircular apse. A balcony extends three bays inward from the entry over the nave. The nave's ceiling is plaster, simulating a shallow rib-vault. A crypt underlies the chapel.
Location
Categories
Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).
Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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Questions about this property
When was St. Mary's Seminary Chapel listed on the National Register?
St. Mary's Seminary Chapel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 11, 1971.
What type of historic resource is St. Mary's Seminary Chapel?
St. Mary's Seminary Chapel is classified as a building in the National Register of Historic Places.
Is St. Mary's Seminary Chapel a National Historic Landmark?
Yes. St. Mary's Seminary Chapel has been designated a National Historic Landmark (NHL), the highest level of federal recognition for historic properties in the United States.
What is the period of significance for St. Mary's Seminary Chapel?
The period of significance for St. Mary's Seminary Chapel is recorded as the industrial era.
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