Major funding for backstory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment

for the Humanities, the University of Virginia, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial

Foundation, and the Arthur Vining Davis foundations.

From Virginia Humanities, this is backstory.

Welcome to backstory, the show that explains a history behind today's headlines.

I'm Nathan Connolly.

I'm Joanne Freeman.

And I'm Brian Ballow.

If you're new to the podcast, we're all historians, and each week we explore the history

of one topic that's been in the news.

Every year, New York's St. Patrick's Day Parade marches up 5th Avenue and brushes past

the steps of a world famous monument to Catholic piety, vision, and ambition.

So, we're going to start at a special ceremony on 51st Street in New York City.

But it's not the bustling Midtown Manhattan that we know today with its hotels and banks

and glitzy shops.

This is August 15th, 1858, and this part of the city is still woodsy and unpopulated.

Here, the Archbishop of New York, John Hughes, is about to lay the cornerstone for his dream

project, the construction of the greatest church in the United States.

So on this hot Sunday in the summer of 1858, he has a platform erected on the empty

lot that is now St. Patrick's Cathedral.

This is writer John Locory.

He says that an enormous number of people packed into the open space.

...