Grace Cathedral, San Francisco

Anglican Portal

Grace Cathedral is an Episcopal cathedral located on Nob Hill in San Francisco, California. It is the cathedral church of the Episcopal Diocese of California, once state-wide in area, now comprising parts of the San Francisco Bay Area. The cathedral community is known for its open-mindedness, and is willing to accept teachings from religions besides Christianity.

The Cathedral has become an international pilgrimage center for church-goer and visitor alike, famed for its replica of Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise", two labyrinths, varied stained glass windows, Keith Haring AIDS Chapel altarpiece, and medieval and contemporary furnishings, as well as its 44 bell carillon, three organs, and choirs.

It contains one of only seven remaining Episcopal men and boys cathedral choirs, the Grace Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys, along with two other choirs with its corresponding boys K-8 school in the United States, along with Washington National Cathedral. Its director of music and choirmaster is Jeffery Smith.

Grace Cathedral is linked with Cathedral School for Boys. It has roughly 250 students and is one of the most prestigious of the private K-8 schools in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The current dean is the Very Reverend Alan Jones. He is also the moderator of The Forum at Grace Cathedral.

History

Its ancestral parish, Grace Church, was founded in 1849 during the California Gold Rush. The Cathedral is the daughter of historic Grace Church. The first little chapel was built in the gold rush year of 1849, and the imposing third church, for a time called Grace "Cathedral", was destroyed in the fire following the 1906 earthquake. The railroad baron/banker Crocker family gave their ruined Nob Hill property for a diocesan cathedral, which took its name and founding congregation from the nearby parish.

Mark Twain was to satirize the church's efforts to find a short-term rector in the 1860s and 1870s. Among the short term rectors were roll film inventor Hannibal Goodwin and James Smith Bush great-grandfather of former US President George H. W. Bush and great-great-grandfather of current US President George W. Bush. [ [http://www.gracecathedral.org/enrichment/crypt/cry_20010221.shtml Years of Grace, Part I: Chapel to "Cathedral" - gracecathedral.org - Retrieved January 8, 2007] ] Dean J. Wilmer Gresham nurtured the young cathedral and work began on the present structure in 1928. Designed in French Gothic style by Lewis P. Hobart, it was completed in 1964 as the third largest Episcopal cathedral in the nation.

The Ghiberti Doors

The cathedral entrance has an impressive pair of doors, often called the Ghiberti doors. They are a copy of the doors of the Florence Baptistry by Lorenzo Ghiberti, also dubbed Gates of Paradise. It has been said that they had been removed from a Renaissance church in Florence, but it is now known that during World War II the Nazi occupation government had ordered the doors to be removed from the church (to protect them from bombing and maybe to give Hermann Göring a chance to add them to his collection) and that they had been hidden in a disused railway tunnel and that reproductions had been made. The philanthropist Charles D. Field bought these replicas, and they were then shipped to San Francisco and installed on the newly-completed church in time for its official dedication in 1964. [http://www.gracecathedral.org/enrichment/crypt/cry_19960703.shtml] Curiously, the original Ghiberti Doors are no longer installed on the Baptistry: Conservators have decided that they must be preserved in a totally dry, controlled atmosphere. The doors now on the Baptistry are also modern replicas, installed in 1990. The originals, after cleaning and restoration, toured various U.S. museums from 2005 to 2007. [http://travel.nytimes.com/2006/10/16/arts/design/16loan.html - accessed 10/29/2007] [Lubow, Arthur. Smithsonian 18:8 (November 2007). The article doesn't mention the San Francisco copies, but has some good photographs of the originals.]

The Labyrinth

. It is said that if a visitor walks the pattern of the labyrinth, it will bring them to a meditative state. [http://www.gracecathedral.org/labyrinth/] There is also another labyrinth outside of the cathedral in its courtyards.

References

External links

*http://www.gracecathedral.org/
* [http://www.cathedralsofcalifornia.com Cathedrals of California]