The shell has risen only to the height of the gable, the tower is still a stub, and the whole front is cased in timber scaffolding with the arch of the great doorway carried on a temporary timber centring. Flags fly from the topmost staging and workmen and top-hatted men in dark coats are packed along every level of the scaffold and out on the roof, which is what a topping-out looked like. A crowd fills the unmetalled square below among carriages and market women with baskets and pots, and the baroque Holy Trinity column stands clear of them.
About this place
The Roman Catholic parish church of the Name of Mary faces the Town Hall across Trg slobode and is the largest church in Novi Sad. It replaced an eighteenth century church on the same site that was set alight and lost its tower in the bombardment of 12 June 1849; the repairs left the townspeople dissatisfied, and in 1891 the city resolved to pull the old building down and start again. György Molnár drew the plans in 1892 and refused any fee, and the contractors Stefan Gusek and Karl Lerer finished the structure in November 1893 under his supervision, the gilded cross going up on the tower in October 1894. It is a three-aisled neo-Gothic basilica of yellow facing brick, 52 metres long and 25 wide, with a tower of 72 metres, stained glass from Pest workshops and a roof of Zsolnay tiles laid after a fire gutted it in 1904. Novi Sad calls it the cathedral, which it is not: the see of the diocese is at Subotica. In gratitude for the free design the parish set a bust of Molnár in a niche below the choir.
- Date
- 1893
- Coordinates
- 45.25563, 19.84571
- Source
- Public online source
- Licence
- Public domain (historical photograph)
- Size
- 532 × 651 px
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