St. Paul’s was the first permanent house of
worship erected in Buffalo; the cornerstone was
laid June 24, 1819. Being one of the largest public
buildings in the village, St. Paul’s was the scene of
numerous religious and civic activities. The first
recorded Roman Catholic Mass in Buffalo was
offered in St. Paul’s. The completion of the Erie
Canal, in 1825, ended the role of St. Paul’s Church
as a simple mission on the western frontier of
New York State. Buffalo grew rapidly. St. Paul’s
became the mother church to newer parishes.
Sept. 15, 1825, St. Paul’s was the center of an
extraordinary, humanitarian and ecumenical
event. Mordecai Noah, of New York City,
proposed that Grand Island, across from Buffalo,
become a City of Refuge, he named Ararat, as
a proto-Zionist solution to millennia of Jewish
exile and homelessness. The Rev. Addison Searle
permitted the dedicatory ceremony to be held,
with much pomp, in St. Paul’s. The project was
not successful.
The present church was completed in 1851,
and was designated as the Diocesan Cathedral
in 1866. On May 10, 1888, the Cathedral was
almost entirely destroyed by fire. Only the outer
walls and two spires remained. Dr. Israel Aaron,
Rabbi of Temple Beth Zion, offered St. Paul’s
congregation free use of the Temple on Sundays
until their church could be rebuilt. The restored
Cathedral was dedicated on January 3, 1890.
Today, the Cathedral Parish of St. Paul continues
its long history of ecumenicalism, social service
and spiritual ministry to the metropolitan
community.
Wardens and Vestry of St. Paul’s Cathedral and
te Very Rev. N. DeLiza Spangler, Dean of the Cathedral
and Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation
