File:Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Syracuse, New York - 20210508.jpg

English: The Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, 240 East Onondaga Street at Columbus Circle, Syracuse, New York, May 2021. Constructed of gray limestone, the Romanesque Revival style here is exemplified by the small rose window underneath the front gable and overall stout massing, but a touch of Gothic influence can be detected in the narrow and bluntly pointed arches above the windows that underlie the rose window and also feature on the tower, as well as the crenellation and arrangement of pinnacles atop the tower: once central one surrounded by four smaller ones at each corner. The niche statues and reliefs above the double entrance are also most impressive. Though what's shown in this picture consists mostly of the enormous expansion of the original building, designed by local architect Archimedes Russell and completed in 1913, the history of the cathedral traces back to 1841, when the Catholic Society of Syracuse - a consortium of local residents who desired a place of worship closer to their homes than St. John the Baptist, the so-called "Mother Church of Onondaga County" that was located several miles away in the Town of Salina - established St. Mary's, the first Catholic parish in the city. The presence of their original church, located a block south of the present cathedral at the corner of Madison Street, not only attracted congregants from Syracuse's existing Irish-American community but also a not insignificant share of converts from other denominations, and under founding pastor Rev. Michael Heas, the parish's growth was rapid and consistent enough to require a steady stream of enlargements to the church building, subdivisions of the parish's territory (St. John the Evangelist was the first of these, in 1852, a North Side parish that would later be known as the home church of Syracuse's Italian-American population), and finally, in 1886, the construction of the original portion of the present building. 1886 was also the year the Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse was split from that of Albany, and - after a period of 24 years during which St. John the Evangelist served as its seat - then-Bishop Patrick Anthony Ludden ordered the conversion of St. Mary's into the diocese's new cathedral, renamed Immaculate Conception, hence the aforementioned expansion at the hands of Archimedes Russell. The cathedral today includes a Shrine of the Blessed Mother that includes a statue sculpted by LeMoyne College Professor Jacqueline Belfort-Chalat, incorporates a brick taken from the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and given to the congregation by Pope Leo XIII, contains the original pipe organ installed at the first St. Mary's which was the first such organ in Central New York, and cares for the community with a downtown food pantry under the auspices of Cathedral Emergency Services.