View the clock mechanism (not active yet)B efore the end of 1839, the fourth church of St. James was completed. With seating for two thousand, and with Dr. Strachan enthroned as the Bishop of Toronto on December 22nd, the new stone church became the first St. James' Cathedral. However, the cathedral's destiny was short.
On April 7th, 1849, sparks from a great fire raging nearby ignited the wooden tower destroying everything except the stone walls. Undeterred by yet another disaster, the redoubtable Bishop Strachan gave instructions to prepare plans for a new cathedral.
Frederick Cumberland produced the plans for the new building and on November 20th, 1850, the Bishop laid the cornerstone. Three years later, at a cost of $94,000, the new St. James' Cathedral, excluding the tower, was completed and opened for services on June 19th, 1853. In 1865, the tower was expanded by 35 feet to accommodate a set of cathedral bells. The first set of bells was ordered from Taylor and Co., of Loughborough, England, but they were lost at sea when the ship carrying them foundered in a storm. A second set of nine bells was ordered from Meenely & Sons of West Troy, N.Y. (Fig. 7), and they were, at the time, the largest set of bells ever cast in the United States. The bells, ranged from 590 lbs to 4,857 lbs, for a total weight of 17,555 lbs. The chimes of St. James' Cathedral first rang out across the city of Toronto on Christmas Eve, 1865. A tenth bell was added in 1928.
In 1874, with its tower finished, the fifth and final St. James' Cathedral stood complete - one of the finest examples of Early English Gothic architecture in North America. Total length of the cathedral is 198 feet, with a maximum width of 98 feet, and a height of 84 feet. The 30-foot square tower rises to a height of 305 feet to the tip of the weather vane. And in the tower resides the clock of St. James, one of the finest examples of a chiming public clock anywhere in the world.
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