St. Patrick's Old Cathedral

St. Patrick's Old Cathedral Review

If you've watched The Godfather, you've peeked inside New York's first Roman Catholic cathedral— the interior shots of the infamous baptism scene were filmed here. Dedicated in 1815, this church lost its designation as the seat of New York's bishop when the current St. Patrick's opened uptown, in 1879. The unadorned exterior of the cathedral gives no hint of the splendors within, which include an 1868 Henry Erben pipe organ. The interior dates from the 1860s, after a large fire gutted most of the original design. The enormous marble altar surrounded by hand-carved niches (reredos) houses an extraordinary collection of sacred statuary and other Gothic exuberance. There's a maze of mortuary vaults underneath the cathedral (older residents of Little Italy recall playing hide-and-seek in the vaults). Sunday Mass in English at 9:15 and 11:45.