The Cathedral of Saint Helena

The Cathedral of Saint Helena rises above the north end of downtown on a prominence that feels chosen, which it was. Construction began in nineteen oh eight and the first Mass was held in nineteen fourteen, years of quarrying and shipping and skilled stonework that produced one of the most architecturally serious Gothic Revival buildings west of the Mississippi River.

The design was modeled directly on the Votivkirche in Vienna, one of the great neo-Gothic churches of the European continent. The two towers stand two hundred and thirty feet tall. The exterior is limestone, cut and assembled by craftsmen who worked for years on nothing else. The rose window above the main entrance is one of the largest in the American West.

Inside, the nave reaches seventy-two feet from floor to vault, with ranks of stained glass windows imported from Germany and Bavaria before the outbreak of the First World War. The windows arrived in crates across the Atlantic and then by rail to Montana, and they have remained in their stone tracery ever since. Fifty-nine individual windows, including a series depicting the life of Saint Helena, the Roman empress and mother of Constantine who is credited with discovering the True Cross.

The nineteen thirty-five Helena earthquakes nearly destroyed the south tower, which was rebuilt and reinforced by nineteen thirty-eight.

On a clear day, the white towers of Saint Helena's are visible from the Interstate passing east of the city, a landmark that arriving travelers see before they see anything else of Helena. It is a building that announces, without apology, that this city expected to last.