St Mary Star of the Sea Church
St Mary Star of the Sea is one of the most beautiful and historically significant churches in Australia. The foundation stone of St Mary's was laid in 1882 and the building was completed by 1900. Since 2002 restoration has been ongoing to restore the church to its original splendor. Built with seating for over 1,200 people, it has been described as the largest parish church in Melbourne, in Victoria, or even in Australia.
The foundations of the current church were laid in June 1892. A young and as yet unknown architect, Edgar J. Henderson, tendered plans for a grandiose sandstone cruciform in the French Gothic style. At 175 feet long and 94 feet wide, the proposed church was criticised by Archbishop Carr for being too large, but parishioners embraced the ambitious project. Within a year, however, economic depression had wrought havoc on the project's finance. Remarkably, in the face of devastating poverty, parishioners managed to fund ongoing construction, and church was built in eight years.
Phillip Kennedy took over Henderson's architectural role, and the contrast between the church's exterior and interior can be attributed to his influence. Henderson's rose windows, battered plinths, cylindrical turrets, and soaring groined timber ceiling exemplify the French Gothic Revival. Kennedy's glossy marble and granite pillars, intricate marble fittings, and pink tinted walls, however, betray an Italianate influence.
On 18th February 1900, Cardinal Moran opened and blessed the new church to great fanfare, before an assembly of 1,400. The church was finally completed in 1925. On 12 February, His Excellency Archbishop Cattaneo, Apostolic Delegate, dedicated the new marble high altar and consecrated the completed church.
The church itself is of brick construction, with an external stone facing. It has a plinth of rock-faced Malmesbury bluestone, which is surmounted by a course of splayed blocks of Mount Somers limestone. Above this is the facing of Barrabool Hills sandstone. Two types of limestone, both of New Zealand origin, have been used for the external dressings: Mount Somers limestone for the plinth course, door jambs and window tracery, and Oamaru limestone for all other dressings. The colonettes, flanking the window and door openings, are of polished Aberdeen (red) granite.
The roof of the church is clad in Westmorland slate, with 'tile ridging'. Westmorland slate is of English origin; it has a tendency to be green in colour, in contrast to the blue-coloured slate from Wales. The slates are doubled-nailed with copper nails. The original 'tile ridging' was replaced in 1941. At the crossing of the roof is a fl�che, substantially of pressed zinc on timber framing. This is in the form of a polygonal shaft with eight trefoil-arched openings, containing louvred vents, surmounted by a tapering conical spire, clad partly with rounded slate, and partly with flat sheet zinc. The fleche is further embellished with a row of projecting decorative elements at the base of the spire, and a Latin cross, once gilded, at the apex.
The Fitzgerald Tower, as it was named in the 1890s, remains incomplete. It was originally to be 50 metres tall, to the tip of the spire. The tower, presently consisting of the equivalent of only two storeys, is square in plan, with intersecting buttresses at each corner. The first floor level (approximately in line with the roof of the aisle) is articulated by a course of splayed limestone blocks, and the upper level by an arcaded limestone frieze, consisting of a row of trefoil arches supported on squat columns with cushion capitals.
In its embryonic years, St Mary's was an overwhelming Irish Australian parish. In the years of the Gold Rush, however, a significant number of Chinese Australians also worshipped there. The graves of many of St Mary's early parishioners still lie beneath the Queen Victoria Market a few hundred metres eastward.
Post war immigration to Australia transformed St Mary's congregation. Italian and Maltese Australians embellished popular devotion and worship. In more recent years Lithuanian and Vietnemese Australians have also contributed to the life of the parish.
location: St Mary Star of The Sea, 33 Howard Street, West Melbourne
