When locals tour Europe, they return with vivid descriptions of some of the world’s oldest cathedrals and basilicas, never realizing that some of the best architectural rivals to those revered sites can be found on American soil.
CHRIS KELLY staff Holy Cross Church in Rumson, which is celebrating its 125th anniversary, was designed by architect Patrick Charles Keely circa 1884. One of the architects responsible for many of those early Catholic churches and cathedrals built along the East Coast was an Irish immigrant by the name of Patrick Charles Keely, who is believed to have been born in 1816 in County Tipperary in Ireland.
Remarkably, a sleepy little town on the Jersey Shore would serve as host to one of Keely’s designs when an architect was needed for the newly formed parish of Holy Cross, in present-day Rumson.
Randall Gabrielan, executive director for the Monmouth County Historical Commission and author of over 30 books on historical topics ranging from the beginnings of local towns to monuments in Jersey City, believes Keely’s breadth of work is underrated and largely unknown.
“Patrick Charles Keely is undoubtedly the best and most prolific yet still little-known architect of his generation,” the Middletown resident told listeners during an April 22 lecture at Holy Cross School in Rumson. “His beautiful design for Holy Cross, drawn around 1884, was a later work of an approximately half-century career, which included commissions for many rural churches, but is best remembered for his numerous cathedral designs and other large parish projects.”
According to historical accounts provided by Holy Cross, Keely was commissioned by the Diocese of Trenton in 1884 to design the church, which was built by John Burke of Asbury Park for the sum of $8,440.
Gabrielan was the third speaker to present information on the church and its origins in honor of the parish’s 125th anniversary celebration.
“We wanted to highlight some of the history of the parish as we prepare for the future of the church,” said parish assistant Eugenia Kelly. “We have also been looking to expand our church in order to accommodate our growth, and we are trying to do it in a way that will honor our history here in Rumson.”
According to Kelly, Gabrielan’s lecture was part of the yearlong celebration that kicked off last year with a horse-drawn carriage ride for the pastor of Holy Cross, the Rev. Michael Manning, from the church’s original location in Sea Bright to the its current location on Ward Avenue in Rumson.
“In June last year, we had a kickoff Mass that started with Father Manning making the horse-drawn carriage trip Father [John H.] Fox [the first pastor] made from Sea Bright to Rumson all those years ago,” Kelly said. “And we have had a year of activities to commemorate our 125th anniversary that highlights all aspects of parish life.”
Kelly said that on June 14, the church will host a closing Mass with the bishop of the Diocese of Trenton, the Most Rev. John Smith.
“In between the Masses, we had a big gala, a concert, a dinner-dance and three historians discussing the history of Catholicism in the area, how to write parish history, and a lecture about the architect who built Holy Cross,” Kelly said. “We also have a commemorative book that is going to print soon, highlighting the church’s centennial and 125 years in the community.”
Kelly said that Father Manning researched quite a bit about the parish’s history.
“Father Manning has been the driving force behind a lot of the information regarding the church’s history,” she said. “He opened the cornerstone and spent time up in the belfry digging up old records and documents.”
For such a prominent community served by Holy Cross, the parish had humble beginnings and was founded as a place of worship for local servants, mostly Irish immigrants employed by the area’s elite and largely Protestant households.
The parish of Holy Cross began in neighboring Sea Bright before Bishop Michael J. O’Farrell acquired the land in Rumson in 1882 for the parish’s current location.
According to the church history recounted on the Holy Cross website, in May 1883 the growing Catholic population in the Sea Bright and Rumson areas called for the formation of a new parish, prompting the bishop to commission the Rev. John H. Fox to organize one.
Father Fox began renting a nearby location, the Knights of Pythias hall in the River Side Hotel, which was located at a steamboat landing between South and River streets in Sea Bright, for $200 a month, and the first Mass was celebrated there on June 17, 1883. The priest and his new parishioners were eager to have a new church, but it wasn’t until the spring of 1885 that he would decide on the Rumson location for his new church.
“On May 5, there was the initial purchase of the former R.W. Rutherford property,” the website states. “But the property proved inadequate in size, being only 80 feet wide, and a subsequent exchange and purchase of property from the neighboring S.H. Hartshorne estate was executed later in August.
“The parish was incorporated on March 3, 1884, with papers filed on March 4, bearing the corporate name of ‘The Church of the Holy Cross, Sea Bright, N.J.,’ a name which continues to this day, even though the church itself is now located in Rumson,” the site explains.
The other prominent Rumson church in the area at that time, Gabrielan explained, was the First Presbyterian Church, designed by the firm of Carrere and Hastings, the same prestigious firm that designed other notable buildings such as the New York Public Library. “Comparing Holy Cross with Rumson’s other great church of its time, First Presbyterian … is a revealing study of contrasts,” Gabrielan said. According to Gabrielan, First
Presbyterian’s designer, Thomas Hastings, had career beginnings that outshone Keely’s immigrant upbringing and early start, but it was Keely’s experience and mastery of carpentry that made his works so intricate and unique, oftentimes including his own handcarved designs on vaulted ceilings and altars.
Hastings, from a prominent Presbyterian family, had a “power elite to propel his career,” Gabrielan said, but Keely had earned the patronage of the Rev. Sylvester Malone of Brooklyn, N.Y.
With the support of Father Malone, Keely’s work would impress higher-ups within the growing American branch of the Catholic Church, allowing him to win the honor of designing his first church, the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul in Providence, R.I., a move that would eventually lead him to the Jersey Shore and Rumson.
“As the number of Catholics grew, new dioceses were created, which of course expanded the number of cathedrals,” Gabrielan explained. Keely designed every cathedral in New York in his time excepting one, St. Patrick’s.”
While his path into New Jersey may have been a winding one, it would eventually lead Keely to the area formerly known as Oceanic, Gabrielan explained, while linking influential clergy members throughout the course of Keely’s career.
“So how exactly did Keely receive the Rumson Holy Cross commission? Perhaps it stemmed from Keely having a significant church in Trenton around the same time, SacredHeart, a project that was identified as his only in the recent past,” Gabrielan mused. “One can look to [Holy Cross’] first pastor’s prior assignment. While the Right Reverend John H. Fox came to Holy Cross from St. Joseph’s in Bound Brook, he was there for only a few months, but his career began at St. Joseph’s in Jersey City, a Keely design.”
Gabrielan noted that throughout Keely’s career, he was commissioned repeatedly by priests and had developed a kind of following, serving the church when the need for a new parish arose.
Keely’s work extended as far north as St. Mary’s Basilica in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and as far south as the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Charleston, S.C. Keely’s greatest work, Gabrielan noted, was the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Brooklyn, which was never completed and was later demolished.
Keely provided the design for another Monmouth County church, Holy Spirit in Asbury Park, headed by the Rev. Michael Glennon, who was originally from St. Bridget’s in Jersey City and who was also responsible for building the old St. Catharine’s Church in 1879 in Holmdel on Stillwell Road.
Could the old St. Catharine’s in Holmdel be a Keely design?
Gabrielan said he couldn’t be sure, but that there seem to be similarities in the little church’s style.
“Holy Cross seems to be built in Keely’s smaller Catholic church style: a gabled building that is about five or so bays deep,” Gabrielan said. “St. Catharine’s looks similar, but I am not sure if it is a Keely or not.”
The humble architect left little evidence of his presence in the area except for his few designs, because most of his records were lost, Gabrielan said. But there is speculation about how far Keely’s body of work reaches into Monmouth County and, more specifically, the Navesink area.
“The present St. James [Church, in Red Bank] was designed by Joseph Swannell in 1864, but the older St. James was somewhat out of the way and a relatively modest structure,” Gabrielan said. “The old St. James and its accompanying school, which is gone now, may have been a Keely design.”
Gabrielan said that his love of architecture, his faith and his interest in the historical rise of Catholicism in the area is what drew him into researching the architect further for his Holy Cross lecture.
“Nineteenth-century Catholicism was not well established here until the locals of other faiths began employing Irish help, who were predominantly Catholic,” he said. “In the New York area, we see the rise of Catholicism in the latter quarter of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century, but it isn’t until suburbanization in this area that we see a rise of Catholicism, with the building of St. Benedict’s and St. Catharine’s [both Holmdel]. You have to remember that in the 1950s, people were coming here from places like Jersey City, which was a very Catholic city at the time.”
Gabrielan said the fact that Keely was so prolific and yet so forgotten is what drew him in further.
“He was so important in his field, and at the same time he was so forgotten,” Gabrielan said. For more information on Holy Cross and its history, as well as the 125th anniversary, visit the website www.holycrossrumson.org.