St. Patrick's Cathedral is the largest Gothic Revival Catholic church in North America, built when the Irish were fighting their way up from the bottom of New York's social order. St. Patrick's Cathedral was designed by James Renwick Jr. and took twenty-one years to build, opening in 1879. It cost nearly two million dollars, raised largely from Irish immigrant communities who sent their pennies and dollars in defiance of those who said the poor should not try to build so grand a thing in so expensive a neighborhood.
The white marble twin spires rise 330 feet above Fifth Avenue, dwarfed today by Rockefeller Center across the street but still commanding in their setting. Inside, the nave seats 2,200 people under a 108-foot vaulted ceiling, the stained glass windows were made by studios in Chartres and Birmingham, and nineteen side altars line the walls. Stand at the entrance and look across Fifth Avenue at 30 Rockefeller Plaza: a cathedral and a commercial temple face each other across midtown's busiest street.