INTERACTIVE TOUR MAP

It took 100 years for parishioners to fund and decorate the interior of the Basilica with sacred art. Paintings, art glass, and statuary adorn all the sacred spaces throughout the Basilica. To view these sacred spaces and learn more about sacred art adorning them, please view our interactive map below.

If viewing on a cell phone, please rotate to landscape orientation to better see the map. 

Tour Stops 7-20 in the interactive map above

The Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels is home to some of the finest domestically-produced Munich-style windows in the United States.

Munich-style art glass is painted and then fired. They are not "stained" as we see in traditional church windows. Our windows were crafted and installed in 1919 by the Daprato Statuary Co. in Chicago which had established an art glass studio in 1917. During those years of World War I, it was not possible to ship such art from Germany and Austria where Munich-style windows were crafted. So Daprato hired European artists to create Munich windows here in the United States. The window themes were the creations of Fr. Thomas Plassmann, president of St. Bonaventure University at the time. Depicting the life of Jesus with his mother, Mary, the scenes are arranged as with a family photo album-- in chronological order starting at Tour Stop #7. Fr. Plassmann deliberately had the windows on the eastern wall reflect scenes from Sacred Scripture. Windows on the western wall are taken from Sacred Tradition. Please also note that the windows are designed to correspond to the subjects of the windows directly across the nave. So Stop #7 window thematically corresponds with Stop #8 window, for example. Because of their artistic splendor and size, ecclesial art historians and glass art experts agree that these are among the finest Munich-style windows in the United States. All of these exquisite windows were paid for by parishioners (including children!) with individual memorial donations by the time of their installation in 1919.

The fourteen stations of the Cross are all original to the 1915 church. They were purchased from Daprato Statuary Co. which also provided the windows. All Stations were white-washed with a stone-like paint at some point in the early 20th century. It is unknown why these statues were redesigned to appear as marble sculptures. In 2016, Swiatek Studios of Buffalo painstakenly hand-painted each station according to vintage Daprato catalog photographs. 

Our first resident pastor, Ref. John J. Hamel, purchased these two tranquil paintings of "Jesus the Good Shepherd" and "Jesus blesses the children" while in Germany in the 1890s. They are copies of a contemporary German artist, Bernhard Plockhorst (1825-1907), who was a member of the late Nazarene movement of art, a German Romantic art school (together with other German Protestant painters). These paintings of Jesus adorn the arches of our two side altars. Swiatek Studios of Buffalo touched up and cleaned these paintings in 2015. This restoration was a gift of our parochial vicar at the time, Rev. David Tourville. 

“I had discovered a place where I was to find out something about Happiness.”

Thomas Merton wrote this of his time in rural Olean, New York. His astonishing spiritual conversion, detailed in his best-selling book, The Seven Storey Mountain (1948), was in large measure rooted in the wholesome environment he discovered in Olean, the place where Thomas Merton made significant choices.

He had been on a long spiritual journey which eventually brought him from New York City to this hidden corner of the state to teach at St. Bonaventure University. “[...] when we got out at Olean we breathed its health and listened to its silence,” the young Merton recalled as he stepped off the train station platform.

But his conversion was just the beginning of his storied life. In 1941 he would stop at St. Mary of the Angels Church to pray the Stations of the Cross before boarding the Olean train one last time—his journey taking him to a Trappist monastery where he would begin a hidden life as one of the most important spiritual writers of the 20th century. He wrote of a particular moving experience in prayer while in the quiet of the church that winter evening, noting candles flickering by the St. Joseph statue. To commemorate that event, the Basilica keeps a perpetual blue candle lit by that very statue.

Pope Francis, in his address to a joint session of Congress in 2015, pointed to Merton as “above all a man of prayer, a thinker who challenged the certitudes of his time and opened new horizons for souls and for the church. He was also a man of dialogue, a promoter of peace between peoples and religions.”

Congregation: Worshiping on this site since 1852 starting with a small "shanty" church built by Irish immigrants. The second church was built in 1858 by the Franciscans at St. Bonaventure's College who put it under the patronage of Saint Mary of the Angels. 
Building Constructed: Spring 1913 - Fall 1915 under pastor Rev. Edward Rengel
Architect: Emile M. Uhlrich-- French, trained in Paris and based in Cleveland, Ohio
Blessed: Formally opened and blessed by (Venerable) Msgr. Nelson Baker, VG September 26, 1915. He was first to preach here where he was introduced to Uhlrich through Fr. Rengel. Father Baker subsequently hired Ulrich to design Our Lady of Victory Shrine in Lackawanna.
Consecrated: June 29, 1919 by Bishop William Turner. Homilist was Patrick Cardinal Hayes from New York.
Cost: $250,000 paid for by predominantly Irish/ German immigrant parishioners over 7 years in relatively small donations, few exceeding three figures
Building: Gothic Revival
•159 feet long; 84 feet wide in the transept
•150 feet twin towers capped with stone steeples & 7-ft. Celtic crosses
•Constructed almost exclusively of white Pennsylvania marble
Seating Capacity: approximately 750 
Renovations/Restorations in 1926, 1952, 1988, 2015
Named Minor Basilica on February 14, 2017 by Pope Francis.

“Basilica” is a title of honor conferred by the pope on a church of great architectural, historic and spiritual importance. Basilica in Greek means ROYAL HOUSE. These exceptional churches serve as an important place of international pilgrimage and a center for the entire region of Roman Catholic faithful in demonstrating and living out the rich values of the Gospel. Basilicas are held up as examples of liturgical and pastoral life. St. Mary's was the 83rd basilica named in the United States. Only a pope may confer this rare title.

With this prestigious title, we are bound to a closer relationship with the Pope in assisting him, as successor to St. Peter, in spreading the Gospel message of Jesus Christ to all who come our way.