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History of the Church of The Immaculate Conception
The Age of Churches

Page 3 of 6

Rev. Matthew O'Keefe

On the first Sunday of April, 1887, Father Mead introduced the congregation to his successor, the Reverend Matthew O'Keefe. Father Mead returned to Saint Augustine's, Williamsport, and left the Towsonites in the care of a sixty-year-old native of Waterford, Ireland. Father O'Keefe, who had served the Richmond diocese for thirty-five years, personally nursing the sick during the yellow fever epidemic of 1855, was appointed chaplain to Mehone's Brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War. Following the war, he personally funded a seminary for priests that graduated a class of seven before the project proved too costly to continue. A second plague won him a commendation and a gold watch from the Emperor Napoleon III in 1869 when he spent more than a week with a quarantined French naval vessel, ministering to the stricken seamen.21

One of Father O'Keefe's earliest goals for Towson was to start a school. Though initially the Sunday School room of St. Francis's Church was used, by September of 1887, the school's first fifteen pupils were moved to the church basement and by the end of the year, enrollment had reached forty-six. Two Notre Dame sisters were assigned as teachers and Father O'Keefe offered the rectory for their use, moving into a nearby boarding house.22 It would be four years before a second rectory, a brick house at 706 Washington Avenue, would be acquired.23

In November of 1888, the Baltimore County Democrat reported that Father O'Keefe had purchased "Chew's store property on the southeast corner and nine acres on the west side of York Road, northwest of Washington Avenue as a church site."24 The new property was cleared of timber and sandstone deposits and designated the Mount Maria Cemetery .25 The first interment occurred on May 2, 1889, following the funeral of Mrs. Julia Foley of Loch Raven.26

Despite the addition of a gallery that expanded the seating capacity to 500, it was apparent that the frame church could no longer adequately accommodate Towson's Catholic population. Cardinal Gibbons agreed that a larger church was needed. Consequently, in 1894, with the aid of Mrs. Cecelia Whiteford and George W. Abell, son of the first publisher of the Baltimore Sun, who bore all the expenses, Father O'Keefe acquired the high ground west of the church on Sater's Ridge (or Brittain Ridge, as the colonels had called it) and renamed the 501-foot plateau Monte Maria.27 The new church was to be named in honor of Mary's Immaculate Conception.

By early 1894, foundation stones from the ruins of St. James College, Phoenix, had been transported by Northern Central Railroad to the site.28 Asking no support from the congregation, Father O'Keefe used his own salary to purchase two quarries; another was donated by Francis Hines, and by May, 1897, much of the building materials had been gathered on the Site.29

The dormer rooms in which Rev. O'Keefe lived.

The new church was to be a duplicate of Saint Mary's Church in Norfolk, Virginia, an elegant structure in the Gothic Revival style described as the most beautiful church south of Baltimore. However, the Towson structure included plans for a 200-foot bell tower at the northwest corner rather than the central entrance spire that is still to be seen in the Norfolk Church. Keely and Houghton, the Brooklyn, New York, architects who designed Saint Mary's in Norfolk, drafted plans for the new Saint Mary's of the Immaculate Conception to be 73 by 153 feet, with a floor plan based on fourteen phoenix columns, and to be lighted by electricity. Isaac Laren was the contractor under the personal direction of Father O'Keefe. 30 31

By the time the granite cornerstone of the church was laid on December 8, 1897, the Maryland Journal noted that the walls were partly up. Three years later, the marble work was practically completed and the walls were being topped off. Marble flooring from the recently demolished Merchants' Exchange Building, a creation of the renowned architects, Benjamin Latrobe and Maximilian Godefroy, and marble railings from the earlier Baltimore City Courthouse, added beauty to the new church. Workmen could see the stacks of Sparrows Point and the sailing vessels cruising on Chesapeake Bay as they installed the slate roof. It was later said that Father O'Keefe, foreseeing regular airplane traffic, had the gigantic initials worked into the slates.32 The work was well advanced when Father O'Keefe celebrated his golden jubilee on January 3, 1902; by his seventy-fourth birthday in May of the same year, the exterior had been completed.33

The congregation had their first view of the new church on February 5, 1903.34 When the 24-foot high marble main altar was installed in April, the church was substantially complete, with two side altars and two side chapels, donated by John B. Mullin of Paca Street.35 Interior walls and groining were lined with sheet-metal, embossed in a glided fleur de lis pattern, installed by the Penn Metal Ceiling and Roofing Company. The oak sedilia (priest's chairs), carved by Jenkins and Sons, were donated by Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Beacham. The pews, doors, and

The original St. Francis Church, later the School of the Immaculate

gallery front were made by Heise and Burns Mill and Lumber Company of Caroline Street. The stained glass windows were executed by the Baumstark Art Glass Works on Belair Road, whose owner, Mr. Gustave Baumstark donated one of the series depicting the stations of the cross, the fourteenth station, the burial of Christ.36

On May 10, 1903, the first Mass was said in the new church.37 The first marriage, that of Lillie Agnes Roach and Joseph W. W. Billingslea, was celebrated on October 7, but lack of heating system forced the congregation to return, temporarily, to Saint Francis of Assisi Church, at the end of the month.38

More than 1,500 persons were present when Cardinal Gibbons officiated at the dedication ceremonies on September 8, 1904. Deacons of honor were the Reverend J. Doherty, pastor of Saint Mary's, Norfolk, and the Reverend George W. Devine, of Saint John's Church, Eager Street, Baltimore. Music was selected from Haydn's Second Mass. The Reverend D. J. Stafford, rector of Saint Patrick's Church, Broadway, preached the sermon. Cardinal Gibbons praised the late George W. Abell who made the Church of the Immaculate Conception a reality and stated the church was the best in the diocese, "excepting my own dear Cathedral." He expressed the wish that Father O'Keefe would live to see the grounds beautified "and a tower lifting its head above the roof" and credited Father O'Keefe with accomplishing "little short of a miracle in erecting this edifice upon the summit of this commanding hill."39

Father O'Keefe, who had lived in the dormer rooms of the sacristy until his death on January 28, 1906, was buried in the Lady Chapel of his beautiful new church.40 41 He bequeathed to the parish the proceeds from the sale of real estate he owned in Towson and Richmond to erect "a first class school house capable of accommodating not less than a thousand children ... proportionately conformable to the style and beauty of the Church" and one lot west of the cemetery. Father O’Keefe expected that Bosley Avenue would be extended through this area in 1903 (a project that was actually completed in 1954). He also left "A lot of five acres on the York Road (north) opposite the cemetery purchased by me for the purpose of growing feed for my horses (3) and the sisters’ cow and which will sell for $2,000, as so as I have no further use for draft horses." 42

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