The Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Richmond, Virginia, 1903--1906: An example of the American Renaissance

The Cathedral of the Sacred Heart (1903--06) is a major example of American Renaissance architecture in Richmond. This thesis establishes a new framework for reconstructing and interpreting the architectural history of this work. First, this thesis discusses the Cathedral's patron, Thomas Fortune Ryan (1851--1928) and its architect, Joseph Hubert McGuire (1865--1947). The thesis then provides a chronology of the Cathedral's design and construction and in the process explores five interpretive ideas that emerged from physical evidence gathered in the past two years.;The evidence includes a previously unstudied preliminary design of 1902, 153 construction drawings, 168 sheets of specifications, and an indispensable thesis written half a century ago by Joseph Alexander Amrhein. Of the five interpretive ideas developed, one addresses the international Catholic influences seen in the earliest known preliminary design. A second interpretation indicates an Ecole des Beaux-Arts influence in the design. The third interpretation suggests an American Renaissance prototype for the Cathedral's main facade. A fourth demonstrates that, in 1906, the Cathedral had a decorative program based on devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The last interpretive idea suggests a possible debt to a program for ideal churches devised by the Renaissance theorist and architect Leone Battista Alberti (1404--72).