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Another Ed Sadowski creation
ED SADOWSKI
CHURCHES
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Downtown
Denver
CHURCHES
Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception
Holy Ghost Church/1999 Broadway Bldg.
St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church
St. John's Cathedral
The Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
E. Colfax Ave. and Logan St.
(technically located one block outside of designated "downtown" and included here because of this proximity)
The Cathedral has the largest number of stained glass windows of any church of any denomination in the United States: 75 windows, holding 20,000 pieces of glass, filtering in sunlight to produce an intentionally dimly-lit interplay of light and space in the Gothic tradition.
The specially designed German-crafted windows were intended “to dwarf man and the present...and be a sanctuary of space and silence.” In 1912 the total cost of the 75 windows were $34,000. Today, just one transept window would cost over $500,000.
This double-spired French Gothic-style cathedral, completed in 1911, was built with Colorado granite and Indiana limestone, with Italian marble throughout the interior. Margaret Tobin Brown (“The Unsinkable Molly Brown”) helped raise funds to build the Cathedral.
Pope John Paul II celebrated mass in the Cathedral twice during his 1993 World Youth Day visit to Denver. The Cathedral was named a basilica in 1979, the fourth such designation in a western state. A basilica is a church with certain privileges conferred on it by the Pope. A leading Catholic publication listed Denver as one of the ten most important Catholic cities in the nation.
Holy Ghost Church and 1999 Broadway Bldg. /////
19th at California and Broadway
It's a unique and unlikely tale of two buildings: The Holy Ghost church occupied a tight triangular space that a developer wanted to build on. At first seemingly untenable, the awkward idea was made to work. The solution: a skyscraper built around a church.
Financial incentives to the church and a clever and cozy design has seen two utterly dissimilar buildings thrive in ever so-close proximity to each other. Completed in 1985, the concave 46-story high rise curves and wraps itself protectively around the back of the church. Interior and exterior design features of shapes and colors complement its smaller, older counterpart.
The Italian and Spanish renaissance-style church was begun in 1924 and completed in 1943 with a gift from Helen Bonfils. Three hundred tons of Colorado colocreme travertine marble beautify the walls and columns of the church, making it the largest collection of this stone in the United States. Beat figure Neal Cassady was once an altar boy here.
St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church //////////
Auraria Campus
St. Elizabeth of Hungary is one of only a handful of church communities in the world (and only four in the US) composed of both Roman and Russian Orthodox Byzantine Rites (also called Eastern Catholics or Russian Catholics), under the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.
When the schism between Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic liturgical traditions occurred in the 11th century, a group of Russian worshippers maintained their communion with the Catholic Church, surviving today.
The joint East-West St. Elizabeth of Hungary community was formed in 2003 in order to worship in the Russian Byzantine style, although it does not have a Russian national character.
Since 2016 its home is on the Auraria Campus in the historic St. Elizabeth’s parish (founded in 1898), a mission of the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Denver, under the authority of the Archdiocese of Denver.
St. John's Cathedral //////////////////////////////////////
20th & Welton
GONE INTO HISTORY (this location)
The Cathedral of St. John in the Wilderness was the US Episcopal Church’s first cathedral in the West, and the third Episcopal cathedral in the country.
It was built in 1881 at the corner of 20th and Welton streets. The Cathedral’s first dean was English-born H. Martyn Hart, who worked with other Denver clergy in 1887 to create the Denver Charity Organization, the first community charity solicitation fund in the United States, later renamed the United Way.
The Cathedral moved to its present Capitol Hill location at 14th and Washington streets, holding its first service there in 1911.
