The fire of 1879 and the Golden Dome

1879 – 1886

The fire: The second Main Building, completed in 1865, stood fourteen years. On the morning of Wednesday, April 23, 1879, flames were seen from its roof; the supports of its white-painted wooden dome burned through and the 12-foot statue of Mary atop it crashed down into the interior, spreading the fire. In about three hours the college was gone. No one was killed or badly hurt. South Bend residents had fought the fire alongside students and faculty and failed with them. Sorin, 65 and just returned from France, reached the ruins on April 27 and made the rebuilding a vow, in the words the university has kept: this time a really large building, crowned with a golden dome and a golden statue of the Mother of God, "so that everyone who comes this way will know to whom we owe whatever great future this place has."

The rebuilding: Chicago architect Willoughby J. Edbrooke, 30 years old, won the commission; ground broke May 17, 1879; some 300 laborers working 16-hour days laid a reported 4.3 million bricks, and classes opened in the new building on September 8, 1879 — three of its five stories finished. The east and west wings followed in 1884, bringing it to its present 144,000 square feet. It remains the university's administration building and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The dome and the statue: The dome itself was finished in September 1882 and the statue raised that October. The statue — cast iron, modeled by the Chicago artist Giovanni Meli on the Immacolata column in Rome's Piazza di Spagna — was the gift of the sisters, students, and alumnae of Saint Mary's College; it had arrived in July 1880 and waited two years on the Main Building's porch. The university’s own accounts of its size have differed: Notre Dame Magazine’s regilding account gives 18 feet 7 inches; ND News has given 16 feet and 4,400 pounds; other retellings give 19 feet and 4,000 pounds. The university’s 2023 restoration record — the statue’s twelfth gilding — settles the working figure at 17 feet and 4,000 pounds, and that figure governs here; the three older figures stand as the printed history of the disagreement, told whole in the regilding entry later in this section.

The gilding: The dome of 1882 was not yet golden. The rebuilding had cost more than a million dollars and left the university in debt, and the Holy Cross Council of Administration refused gold leaf as an extravagance, proposing yellow paint. The deadlock lasted into 1886, when Sorin — by the university magazine's telling, maneuvering from temporary exile at Saint Mary's until the votes were assembled — prevailed. Sorin appealed for 4,000 dollars; the gilding cost 2,000, on the University Archives' records. It has been renewed since at long intervals — the university magazine counted the 2005 regilding, at about 300,000 dollars, as the tenth.

Sources:

1. Notre Dame News, "Main Building turns 125 years old" (news.nd.edu) — the April 23, 1879 fire; Edbrooke; May 17 groundbreaking; the dome added 1882; wings 1884; 144,000 square feet.
2. Notre Dame Magazine, "Regilding the Dome" (magazine.nd.edu) — the fire's course and the fallen statue; the 1886 deadlock and its breaking; the 2,000-dollar cost; the statue's Saint Mary's funding, 1880 arrival, and 18 feet 7 inches; the nine regildings since 1886 as of 2005.
3. University of Notre Dame, "History" (nd.edu/about/history) — the three-hour fire, no deaths, Sorin's words on rebuilding.
4. "Main Building (University of Notre Dame)" — the National Register listing; the September 1882 dome and October 1882 raising of the statue.