By RAY CAVANAUGH
If a Catholic church went up on the East Coast in the latter half of the 19th century, your best bet was that Patrick Keely designed it. After building his first church in Brooklyn in 1847, he proceeded to design an estimated 700 churches and other religious buildings, becoming the nation’s most prolific Catholic architect. This August 9 marks the 200th anniversary of his birth.
Keely was born in Ireland’s County Tipperary, entering a family that lived in “comfortable circumstances,” according to Francis W. Kervick’s brief but thoughtful biography Patrick Charles Keely, Architect: A Record of His Life and Work. Keely’s father was a builder and most likely the one who trained him.
The younger Keely emigrated to the U.S. in the early 1840s and worked as a carpenter in Brooklyn. His big break came while working on a project in Newark, N.J., where he met and befriended a young priest and fellow Irish immigrant, Fr. Sylvester Malone.
When Fr. Malone was later sent to establish a parish in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a church was needed. So he reached out to Keely, and they worked together on a plan for the Church of Saints Peter and Paul.
Many people came by to marvel at this church while it was being built. For Keely, the building served as an ideal résumé and portfolio: Upon completing this church, his services would be in demand for the rest of his life. Numerous churches had to be built to accommodate the massive influx of Catholic immigrants. The dioceses had found their man.
Keely’s first cathedral was the Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Albany, N.Y. This building, rendered in a Gothic Revival style, was completed in 1852 and is the oldest cathedral in New York State, aside from Manhattan’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Over the course of his career, Keely designed Catholic buildings in such cities as Boston, Burlington, Vt., Chicago, Cleveland, Erie, Pa., Fall River, Mass., Jersey City, N.J., Manchester, N.H., Portland, Maine, Providence, R.I., Springfield, Mass., Toledo, Ohio, Washington, D.C., Zanesville, Ohio — and the list could go on far, far longer.
The Keely thumbprint was all over Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and the Northeast. He went as far west as Watertown, Wis., where he designed St. Bernard’s Church; some accounts hold that he also designed a building in Iowa. He went as far north as Quebec, where he designed Montreal’s Church of the Gesù.
He also ventured into the South, where he built the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Charleston, S.C. He also has been credited with designing a cathedral in Natchez, Miss.
A few times (though very infrequently), he strayed beyond Catholicism, designing Protestant churches in Brooklyn and in Hartland, Conn.
Curiously, he went largely unrecognized by his architectural colleagues. The American Architect magazine didn’t even mention him until his death, at which point the publication was willing to concede that “his work was always skillful and clever and often very interesting.”
Francis Kervick speculates that the reason for such neglect was either the era’s prevalent anti-Irish-Catholic bigotry or else professional jealousy that Keely, who lacked any formal training, was in constant demand. Keely did, however, receive plenty of mention in Catholic publications of the era.
Unfortunately, the bulk of his personal letters and documents pertaining to his life was discarded following the death of a daughter who had inherited these items. Keely and his wife Sarah had 17 children, ten of whom survived to adulthood, and two of whom worked with their father. Though the ever-busy architect clearly traveled around, he and his family were based in Brooklyn.
Given all he accomplished, Keely — who attended Mass daily for much of his life — was modest to a fault. Reportedly, he almost always refused to be photographed.
In 1884, he became the second-ever recipient of the Laetare Medal, which is awarded each year to a member of the Catholic laity who exemplifies greatness of work and character. Around the time he received the Laetare, he was described in the Notre Dame Scholastic newspaper as “a fervent and practical Catholic” who “has done more for Christian architecture than any other man in the country.”
As the 1890s progressed, Keely’s health began to decline. He died on August 11, 1896, just two days past his 80th birthday. Soon after his death, the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper wrote of him: “There was not a coarse fiber in his nature. It was a nature in which the spiritual element predominated.”
Keely’s old friend and first patron, Fr. Malone, had been away at the time of his death. But the priest returned to the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Brooklyn — the first church Keely designed, and where Fr. Malone still served as pastor — in order to deliver a Month’s Mind memorial Mass.
Remembering Keely, Fr. Malone said: “He did not have the culture and the teaching of the schools, but he had genius, inspiration, and the stimulus of Catholic principles and of Catholic faith deep in his soul. . . . He gave his whole life to the work, yet he had no money, because he cared not for it.”
A Keely Society exists in honor of the architect. It can be found at patrickkeely.com, a site which lists society events, along with providing some information on Keely and an index of churches he built.
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