BALTIMORE — When John Carroll, America’s first Catholic bishop and, later, arch-bishop, decided to build in Baltimore the nation’s first cathedral, he didn’t envisage Chartres or Notre Dame. He sought the most modern architecture of his day, the neoclassicism being applied to the U.S. Capitol. He wanted to create a light-filled symbol of the country’s newfound religious freedom, not a Gothic-style throwback to the medieval “dark ages.”
The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, begun in 1806, eventually rose to fulfill Carroll’s vision. Architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, who helped shape portions of the Capitol, designed the hilltop church — commonly known as the Baltimore Basilica — with all the splendor of that civic monument: a grand dome with skylights; a stately portico; and tall, rounded arched windows. Over the centuries, however, Latrobe’s brilliant design came to resemble the gloomy, overdecorated churches Carroll had eschewed. Stained glass, green marble floors, mahogany pews, battleship gray paint and other insensitive alterations darkened its once luminous interior.
Today, the Baltimore Basilica shines once again as “North America’s most beautiful church,” in the words of the late architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner. Two centuries of alterations have been stripped away to reveal Latrobe’s elegant, interrelated arches and domes in pale, open spaces suffused with daylight.
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“There’s nothing in the building that hasn’t been restored, repaired or replaced, from the bell-tower clock to the doorknobs,” said Mark Potter, executive director of the Basilica of Assumption Historic Trust, on a recent tour of the restored cathedral.
The transformation is the result of a $32 million restoration begun in 2004 under the direction of John G. Waite Associates of Albany, N.Y., and unveiled earlier this month. As the lead preservation architect, Mr. Waite faced the unique challenge of a building that had taken decades to finish and, even then, continued to undergo changes, some as recent as the 1960s.
The biggest difficulty of the project, he relates, wasn’t reinstating the original architectural features or even installing a new heating and cooling system under the floors but “to have people look at the building with an open mind.” Used to the dim interior, some worshippers wanted to hold on to familiar decorations, especially the stained glass.
It is common preservation practice either to restore a building back to a fixed date or to maintain all accretions over time. However, the Baltimore Basilica, one of the most architecturally significant buildings of the 1800s, called for a different, more design-driven approach.
“It was one of the great buildings being constructed, here or in Europe, at that time,” says Mr. Waite, whose previous preservation projects include Blair House, Mount Vernon and Monticello. “So the important thing was to restore it to Latrobe’s original vision.”
That demanded a thorough understanding of the architect’s intentions, not always easy to gain, given that Latrobe drafted seven neoclassical designs from 1806 to 1817 and died in 1820, before his cathedral was dedicated the following year. Some of his intended architectural features, including the towers and portico, were finished decades later.
Before undertaking the repairs, Mr. Waite and his team spent two years researching the building through archival materials and on-site inspections of every nook and cranny. The result of their intensive sleuthing is a 700-page report detailing the building’s history, physical condition and recommendations for repair.
“The appearance of the building had been radically changed over time, but its core had not,” Mr. Waite says. “Latrobe was trained as an engineer and designed a building that would last forever.”
One of the worst modifications, Mr. Waite says, was the elimination of four Ionic columns just inside the front door. Mirroring pillars in the transept and apse, they were an important part of Latrobe’s harmonious interweaving of repeated elements, and they have been replicated in plaster. An interior balcony over the entrance where blacks were allowed to worship before the Civil War also had been altered and has been reinstated.
Another major change affected the basilica’s most powerful architectural element, its great dome. Comprising an outer and an inner shell, the two-part design was far more advanced than that of other domes of the same period, including those for Monticello, the Capitol and the University of Maryland’s Davidge Hall. Its outer portion was ringed by 24 skylights that were closed or removed in the 1940s. Those openings, hidden from view from inside the basilica, spilled daylight onto the top of the inner dome and down to the sanctuary, creating the magical effect of softly glowing light supplied by an invisible source. Without them, the basilica lost its potency.
Mr. Waite and his team restored and replaced the skylights as part of a larger restoration of the dome that replicated its original wood shingles and copper sheathing. Latrobe’s luminescent interior was recaptured further by substituting slightly translucent panes for the stained glass in the windows around the sanctuary. New light-colored finishes also contribute to the airiness, including pink and light blue decorations in the plaster ceilings and white marble on the floors.
Some of the more radical changes to the church — including architect E. Francis Baldwin’s extension of the apse behind the altar in the 1880s — were left intact because they supported Latrobe’s initial vision.
From the apse, two new marble staircases lead down to the crypt where Archbishop Carroll and others are buried. Latrobe originally designed a chapel in this undercroft, but his plans were misinterpreted by construction workers, who botched the foundations and built the floor too high, leaving the low-ceilinged space to be used for storage. As part of the restoration, this basement was dug out to create a small space for worship and an exhibition gallery. Its rows of hefty, unadorned brick vaults and inverted arches look almost modern, reflecting Latrobe’s engineering genius.
One of the most exciting discoveries, according to Mr. Waite, was finding a piece of the original shingled roof, completely intact with its lead flashing, above the north transept. It had been hidden — and preserved — under a higher shed roof put on in the 1850s that was removed as part of the restoration.
“It is a tremendously important piece of Early American building technology,” says Mr. Waite, who notes that the Capitol similarly was covered in shingles before it was burned by British troops in 1814.
His detective work also proved that the unusual onion domes crowning the basilica’s two towers, at odds with Latrobe’s drawing of hemispherical tops, nevertheless were consistent with the architect’s vision. “Just before his death, Latrobe was experimenting with this type of form,” Mr. Waite says, adding that the onion domes were constructed in the 1830s under the supervision of the architect’s sons.
These exotic Eastern elements add a touch of American pluralism to Latrobe’s masterpiece, an important building not only for Catholics, but for people of all faiths in celebrating their right to worship openly and in the light of day.
Latrobe, Jefferson kindred spirits
“He was more Jeffersonian than Thomas Jefferson,” says preservationist Jack Waite of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, the architect of the Baltimore Basilica.
A renaissance man well versed in art, music, mathematics, literature and politics, Latrobe met Jefferson in the late 1790s after moving to Virginia from his native England. The two struck up a friendship and continued to correspond until Latrobe’s death in 1820 from yellow fever while working on New Orleans’ water system.
Considered this country’s first professional architect, Latrobe trained as an engineer in Germany and worked for leading architects in London before opening his own office. His combined technical and design expertise led him to shape the Philadelphia waterworks as well as the Bank of Pennsylvania, the Virginia state penitentiary as well as Decatur House and St. John’s Episcopal Church near the White House. Latrobe introduced the fledgling republic to the latest architectural styles, the Greek and Gothic Revival, which would remain popular for decades.
His innovations impressed President Jefferson, an amateur architect, who in 1803 appointed Latrobe as the nation’s first surveyor of public buildings. In that job, the English-born architect shaped portions of the U.S. Capitol and worked with his employer on improving the White House. The collaboration sometimes frustrated Latrobe, who wrote of the president, “I am sorry that I am cramped in this design by his prejudices in favor of the old French books, out of which he fishes everything.”
Latrobe, in fact, played an instrumental role in shaping some of Jefferson’s most important designs, including the domed Rotunda at the University of Virginia, now being studied by Mr. Waite for a possible restoration.
Latrobe, Jefferson kindred spirits
“He was more Jeffersonian than Thomas Jefferson,” says preservationist Jack Waite of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, the architect of the Baltimore Basilica.
A renaissance man well versed in art, music, mathematics, literature and politics, Latrobe met Jefferson in the late 1790s after moving to Virginia from his native England. The two struck up a friendship and continued to correspond until Latrobe’s death in 1820 from yellow fever while working on New Orleans’ water system.
Considered this country’s first professional architect, Latrobe trained as an engineer in Germany and worked for leading architects in London before opening his own office. His combined technical and design expertise led him to shape the Philadelphia waterworks as well as the Bank of Pennsylvania, the Virginia state penitentiary as well as Decatur House and St. John’s Episcopal Church near the White House. Latrobe introduced the fledgling republic to the latest architectural styles, the Greek and Gothic Revival, which would remain popular for decades.
His innovations impressed President Jefferson, an amateur architect, who in 1803 appointed Latrobe as the nation’s first surveyor of public buildings. In that job, the English-born architect shaped portions of the U.S. Capitol and worked with his employer on improving the White House. The collaboration sometimes frustrated Latrobe, who wrote of the president, “I am sorry that I am cramped in this design by his prejudices in favor of the old French books, out of which he fishes everything.”
Latrobe, in fact, played an instrumental role in shaping some of Jefferson’s most important designs, including the domed Rotunda at the University of Virginia, now being studied by Mr. Waite for a possible restoration.
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