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An illuminated Grace Cathedral for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, 2022.<\/p>\n
Over Power Production<\/p>\n
From its nascent days as a small, wood-frame, Gold Rush\u2013era church near Union Square to the breadth of experiences offered from where it presides today atop Nob Hill, Grace Cathedral has been a bastion of San Francisco\u2019s religious, cultural and social life for approaching two centuries. Most recently, Aura, a nonreligious immersive experience, opened in October at Grace, marking its only American venue. After enthralling visitors at Les Invalides in Paris and Montreal\u2019s Basilique Notre-Dame, Aura, created by Moment Factory and copresented by Fever, has transformed the Gothic Revival cathedral into a light-filled sanctuary reverberating with captivating storytelling and music.<\/p>\n
Grace, which celebrates its 175th anniversary in 2025, welcomes this latest experience, expected to continue for an extended period, to its extensive array of programing, which includes a traditional choir of men and boys, dynamic sermons from its historic pulpit, impactful social justice advocacy, a yearly artist in residence, weekly yoga and monthly sound bath experiences, thoughtful weekly Forum conversations with The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young and an engaging guest, and a newly established, hugely popular girls choir.<\/p>\n
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The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young, dean of Grace Cathedral<\/p>\n
Melanie Duerkopp<\/p>\n
Young, in his 10th year as dean of Grace Cathedral, recalls that one of his fondest memories is of his wife, Heidi Ho, who grew up on Maui, dancing hula at his installation as the ninth dean of Grace Cathedral. \u201cGrace has given and continues to generate wonderful moments of joy,\u201d says Young, \u201cfrom the 1965 Duke Ellington concert, to our traditional Christmas concerts featuring the amazing choir of men and boys, to recent performances by Alonzo King [Lines Ballet] dancers, to our wonderful new girls choir \u2014 these young ladies are pioneers and their pride and joy show with every performance. These joyful moments illustrate that Grace truly is a Cathedral of courage, joy and wonder.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the close of this anniversary year, Grace is both celebrating an exciting future and recalling its compelling history, which springs from that Gold Rush\u2013era chapel highlighted in the first moments of the Aura production. Going back to 1848, the year before newspaper headlines screamed \u201cGOLD Found in California,\u201d a group of San Francisco Episcopalians petitioned for a clergyman. The Reverend Jean Leonhard Ver Mehr, a Belgian, embarked to San Francisco from the East Coast aboard the George Washington. He arrived in September 1849 to find Trinity Episcopal Church already functioning. With the support and friendship of Trinity\u2019s reverend, Ver Mehr organized a second Episcopal house and selected the name Grace, to accompany Trinity, in direct reference to the two major New York Episcopal churches of the time. A small \u201cshanty,\u201d as Ver Mehr called it, was complete by December 29, 1849.<\/p>\n
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A partially completed Grace, shown on September 29, 1955 with the orphaned north tower, which had been finished before the full nave.<\/p>\n
San Francisco History Center of the San Francisco Public Library<\/p>\n
By 1860, having outgrown its first, then a second slightly larger, more elaborate, wood-frame building, Grace moved uphill to the corner of California and Stockton streets. By this time, both San Francisco and the Grace congregation had grown significantly. The new church, designed by one of the City\u2019s premiere architects, William Patton, was constructed notably of sturdy red brick. Patton, a transplanted Englishman, had emigrated to California during the Gold Rush and designed such praised San Francisco edifices as Temple Emanu-El (1866) on Sutter Street and the nearby Alcazar Theater (1885) on O\u2019Farrell Street. Sadly, like Patton\u2019s landmark Grace Church, which had been consecrated to overwhelming fanfare in 1862, these buildings did not survive the 1906 earthquake and fire.<\/p>\n
After the earthquake, with so much of the City in ruins, chaos ruled. Images of post-earthquake San Francisco include the iconic view looking down California Street toward the shell of the Ferry Building, with the brick remains of both Grace Church and its downhill neighbor, St. Mary\u2019s, visible. Grace would be on the move again, this time hoping to construct a much larger cathedral.<\/p>\n
In pre-earthquake San Francisco, the apex of Nob Hill, home to the current Grace Cathedral, was occupied by some of San Francisco\u2019s most fashionable, exuberant and costly residential properties, with homes for the Stanford, Hopkins, Colton, Flood and Crocker families among them. The 1906 calamity destroyed this grouping of Gilded Age gems, with only the shell of the Flood Mansion remaining.<\/p>\n
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After captivating Paris and Montreal, Aura opened at Grace Cathedral in October. The immersive sensory experience transforms the Gothic Revival space into a sanctuary filled with light, storytelling and music.<\/p>\n
Courtesy of Fever and Moment Factory<\/p>\n
Grace Cathedral\u2019s site had been owned by the Crocker family and was occupied by a pair of side-by-side mansions. Railroad tycoon Charles Crocker owned the larger, more famous edifice, a Victorian built in 1876. Crocker\u2019s third son, banker and philanthropist William H. Crocker, constructed a later Queen Anne\u2013style house. Meanwhile, the entire block was surrounded by a granite and wrought-iron fence, portions of which remain today. Unlike their neighbor, silver baron James Clair Flood, the Crocker family decided not to rebuild on Nob Hill, and a dramatic gift by the family secured a new location for a much-desired Episcopal cathedral.<\/p>\n
With the gift of land came the challenge of building in the post-earthquake frenzy. When the first architect of the new Grace Cathedral, Englishman George F. Bodley, died suddenly after having conceived of an initial design, the project stalled. This is how a young local architect, Lewis Parsons Hobart, came to this important commission. Hobart had studied under Bernard Maybeck at Berkeley, then in Europe at both the American Academy in Rome and Paris\u2019 famous \u00c9cole des Beaux-Arts. In Paris, Hobart not only advanced his design skills, but also met his wife, artist Mabel Reed Deming, who just happened to be the niece of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Crocker. The influence of Paris is evident in Hobart\u2019s design, which is deeply reliant on the example of Notre-Dame de Paris.<\/p>\n
A Cathedral\u2019s Rise<\/p>\n
The great Gothic-inspired cathedral we know today did not rise quickly on its gifted site. The \u201ccrypt,\u201d or lowest level of the church, was the first element constructed before the project picked up speed in 1927. That year, Hobart brought in consulting architecture firm Cram and Ferguson, who were viewed as the best American architects working in the Gothic tradition; they were involved at St. John the Divine, the landmark New York edifice. From the beginning, and as a direct consequence of the earthquake, Grace, unlike its stone counterparts St. John the Divine and Washington\u2019s National Cathedral, was designed as a reinforced concrete structure.<\/p>\n
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Community events programming includes immersive sound baths such as this one on the cathedral\u2019s labyrinth in 2024 to honor Earth Day.<\/p>\n
Tankbris<\/p>\n
In 1929, the small Chapel of Grace rose above the crypt. Ringed with stained glass windows designed by Easterner Charles Jay Connick, Hobart\u2019s Chapel was clearly inspired by Paris\u2019 Sainte-Chapelle, the tiny 13th-century chapel located within a stone\u2019s throw of Notre-Dame. Connick, a prolific and talented American stained glass producer, relied heavily on blue glass, often referred to as \u201cConnick Blue.\u201d The cathedral\u2019s west end and the first three bays of the nave were completed by 1933. Connick Studios also designed the stained glass windows in these cathedral sections. A fan favorite is their Fortitude window on the north side of the nave, which depicts Bishop Peter Rowe, the first Episcopal bishop of Alaska, dressed in a blue snow suit holding his snowshoe with an Alaska Native and an igloo in the background.<\/p>\n
The north tower was completed between 1936 and 1941, but World War II halted all work, with construction not resuming until 1960. For a period the north tower stood orphaned, detached from the nave. Architect Hobart, who had died in 1954, would not see the church, his only religious commission, fully realized. By 1964, the final nave section and the south tower were completed, uniting with the dangling north tower. In these later sections, the stained glass installations included six pairs of windows on either side of the nave completed in 1966 by artist Marguerite Gaudin of Willet Studios, a modern contrast to the more traditional Connick windows.<\/p>\n
The last of the three major stained glass window groupings in Grace were completed by the French studio of Gabriel Loire. These include the monumental rose window titled \u201cThe Canticle of the Sun\u201d facing Huntington Park, installed in 1964, and a 1970 series called Human Endeavor. These 12 windows, six on each side of the nave clerestory, include themes such as education, exploration, law, medicine, industry, agriculture and labor. Pictured are Franklin D. Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, John Glenn and Thurgood Marshall, and gracing the fine arts window is architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Jane Addams, representing social work, is the only woman depicted.<\/p>\n
Doorway to Treasures <\/p>\n
One of the more dramatic moments of the final years of construction was the careful crane placement of the cathedral\u2019s spire, covered extensively in the news. The other media-worthy event of this era was the installation of the Cathedral\u2019s replica Florentine doors, the \u201cGates of Paradise.\u201d<\/p>\n
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