The Omaha skyline glistens and shines with skyscrapers of glass and steel stretching toward the heavens. From an alcove 80 feet over N. 40th Street, a marble statue of St. Cecilia looks west from a high hilltop, out over Omaha and the Nebraska prairie.

Perched between the limestone belltowers of St. Cecilia Cathedral, the statue of St. Cecilia – the patron saint of music – stands silent as traffic hums through downtown Omaha. Rev. Michael Grewe – the twelfth priest to shepherd St. Cecilia’s flock – has never climbed up the belltowers overlooking the city. “The janitor told me that if I go up there, to take a hammer and nails in case the old wooden rungs separate from the ladder, and to bring a phone and flashlight,” Grewe said, with a wry smile.

The towers – 222 feet tall and made with the same Indiana limestone used to build the Nebraska State Capitol – climb through the canopy of elm and oak trees shading Omaha’s Gold Coast neighborhood. The twin pinnacles – one housing three bells and the other providing symmetry but no music at all – glow with the first and last light of each day. The sun’s rays flood the sanctuary through stained glass predating the church by nearly 500 years.

Grewe, a Lyons native who has devoted himself to the Archdiocese of Omaha since 1979, once discovered a flood of another kind as he opened the doors to the cathedral’s Our Lady of Nebraska Chapel.

The chapel used for daily mass includes a statue of the Virgin Mary holding an ear of corn. The torrent irrigating an interior doorway was anything but holy water. The constant freeze and thaw of Omaha winters created an opening just right for wind-driven rain to flow in. The biblical flood took place after the cathedral’s complete renovation in 2000. The roof here is never done, Grewe said of the building encapsulating more than 1.5 million square feet of interior space. “We are on a first-name basis with Omaha’s roofers, plumbers and electricians,” Grewe said.

Omaha architect Thomas Rogers Kimball demanded that the bricks used in building St. Cecilia Cathedral – all 3 million of them – be soaked in water before being mortared into place. He knew that the technique prevented dry bricks from sapping moisture from mortar and therefore reducing its strength.

Kimball also designed the Omaha Public Library, the carriage house at Arbor Lodge in Nebraska City, the Hall County Courthouse in Grand Island and nearly 1,000 other structures in addition to Omaha’s shining cathedral on the hill.

St. Cecilia was organized in 1888 as an Omaha parish church before it was ever a cathedral. Mass was conducted one Sunday each month in a 40-by 60-foot wood frame church built on leased land on Hamilton Street. When the 10-year lease ran out, Bishop Richard Scannell announced that a new cathedral would be “located on a commanding hilltop position on North Fortieth Street.”

Thomas Kuhlman’s book, The Beauty of Thy House: The History, Art and Architecture of Saint Cecilia Cathedral, states “Most Omahans were amazed. Dumbfounded. Even scornful,” of the decision. 

Residents were concerned that the location of the church was too far west, “inaccessible to most. Practically out in the country.” Omaha was growing. So were Dundee and Benson, and Scannell knew it.

Wealthy citizens who were pushed out of old Omaha by increasing train smoke and noise built lavish homes in a new Gold Coast District along West Farnam Street. The four-square-block estate of George and Sarah Joslyn was only blocks away from Scannell’s location for the new cathedral. Bankers, lawyers, doctors, beer barons and meatpacking executives also were moving into the neighborhood.

Contracts for stonework and general construction were awarded in 1904 on the day after Easter. Excavations would last two years.

With the 8-foot-thick foundation built and Kimball’s belltower footings bricked and mortared into place, a cornerstone dedication was planned for Oct. 6, 1907. Father Edward Flanagan – who would establish Boys Town a decade later – led a parade of 10,000 people assembled six abreast, from 17th and Farnam streets, to the site of the future cathedral on N. 40th Street.

Immediately behind Flanagan in the 2-mile-long procession was a platoon of police officers on horseback and 400 members of the Knights of Columbus. The sounds of trumpets, drums and cymbals echoed through Omaha as bands marched along with them. Thirty thousand residents and statesmen, and church officials from 13 states, lined the parade route. Hats were removed as the procession passed a reviewing stand of bishops and other clergy at the corner of 40th and Burt streets. With Flanagan as cross bearer, Scannell set the cornerstone in place with his own two hands.

The church’s next celebration would test the patience of St. Cecilia’s faithful.

Slowed by the Great Depression, two world wars, and deliberate financial restraint from Scannell’s pay-as-you-go-philosophy, 52 more Easters passed before the cathedral would be completed.

Members of the congregation and the Omaha area’s Catholic community donated when they could. Original plans included the creation of four small chapels connected to the cathedral’s main nave, each one to be paid for by a wealthy sponsor. Only Omaha businessman and railroad executive Edward Nash and his wife, Catherine, took part. Members of the Nash family are entombed in a crypt underneath Nash Chapel.

The building was finally consecrated in April 1959. Neither Scannell nor Kimball would live to see the project’s completion.

The city grew up around St. Cecilia Cathedral in that time, and since, and generations of faithful Omahans have grown up under the watchful gaze of St. Cecilia. K.C. Halpine is one of them.

Halpine was baptized at St. Cecilia before construction was completed. The house of worship has been a fixture in her life for all her 65 years. She attended the church’s school and so did her parents. Halpine’s maternal grandparents were founding members of St. Cecilia’s congregation.

Being active in the church was important to Halpine’s ancestors. She keeps that tradition going while decorating for Easter as part of the cathedral’s Flower Guild. Her family’s closeness to the church was also reflected in where they lived.

Three nearby houses needed to be moved when the diocese decided to erect a new school building in the early 1950s. One of the homes belonged to Halpine’s grandmother. Farmers were recruited for the task.

“My mother’s mother had a baby grand piano. The family story goes that these men were so skilled at their jobs, that they didn’t even tie down the piano or even Grandma’s dishes before moving her house to Burt Street, downhill, to make room for the school,” Halpine said.

The school served 800 K-12 students when Halpine attended. About 300 Pre-K through eighth grade children attend the institution known today as St. Cecilia Cathedral Grade School. The cathedral and parsonage stand across the parking lot. A cultural center flanked by a garden and including a museum, gift shop and art gallery is next door.

A locked ornate gate below the cathedral’s 80-foot-tall ceiling leads to another art gallery, one unseen by visitors. Most of the paintings and sculptures were created in the 1700s. One, a wooden piece of liturgical art entitled “Christ Crucified” and produced in Mexico in the 17th century, is Grewe’s favorite.

“This work captures the suffering, the facial expression, the agony before death,” said Grewe, visibly moved as he touched the sculpture for the first time. “Imagine how many people have prayed over this over the centuries.” The gallery will soon be part of a new museum excavated from underneath the sanctuary’s main altar.

Opposite the heavy doors where parishioners, wedding and funeral attendees, and people seeking healing or salvation walk in, stands a bronze depiction of Jesus Christ affixed to a 13-foot-tall wooden cross. Brother William Woeger, the longtime provost of the St. Cecilia Institute for Sacred Liturgy, Music and the Arts, has heard the story of the miracle that led to its immaculate creation.

A man named Albin Polasek was sculpting the crucifix for the high altar, slightly larger than life, and was making good progress. “But he struggled with the face of Jesus,” Woeger said. “In the middle of it, a man came in off the street looking for odd jobs.”

Inspired by this visitor’s face, Polasek began carving feverishly as they talked. He told the man about some shelves to be built and arrangements were made for the man to return the next day. “This man’s face was apparently the answer that the sculptor needed – he modeled Christ’s face after his. The man went on his way and did not show up the next day,” Woeger said. “Who he was remains a mystery.”

When asked if the man was sent by God to provide inspiration for the sculptor, Woeger said, “I don’t think anything happens by accident.” 

One thousand parishioners shuffle toward the crucifix and into mahogany pews as bells chime on Sunday morning. Marie Rubis-Bauer takes her seat at the organ and begins tickling 156 keys on three keyboards. Having to pump, push and press 32 different foot pedals on the Opus 14 pipe organ means each service is a workout for Rubis-Bauer, who came to St. Cecilia in 2003, the same year the instrument was installed.

Air moves more than 30 feet to produce the organ’s lowest notes, notes that Rubis-Bauer says are felt more than they are heard. She considers the organ a work of art and compares the instrument to the cathedral itself.

“In a theological way, I see it as the stuff of the earth – wood, metal and leather – and the skills of the craftsmen who created it,” she said. “The anatomy of the pipes is a metaphor for the community. They function to support singing, to proclaim, for ceremonial purposes, and to soothe the soul.” 

Each note reverberates through the cathedral for seven seconds, a testament to the building’s Spanish Renaissance Revival architecture according to Rubis-Bauer. “The acoustics in here are amazing, perfect Romanesque arches and Italian marble all contribute to a sound that is rare and beautiful. We get to hear the same sounds that have been heard across time,” she said. “The hymns and chants sound the same as they did long go, not echoing, but lingering. Outside, the three tolling bells call people to prayer.”

Rubis-Bauer lives within view of the belltowers standing high over Omaha. “I think the most beautiful view is when coming down California Street, downhill from Dundee at night,” she said. “Looking out across toward Saddle Creek, St. Cecilia Cathedral stands as a shining sentinel from on top of the hill.”