From the
St Paul's Cathedral web site:
Since 1904 St. Paul's Cathedral has served our community from the same downtown location at the northeast corner of NW 7th and Robinson, providing a gracious spiritual heart to our neighbors, Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Oklahoma.
There are a thousand members of St. Paul's, some of whom drive up to thirty miles each way to attend one of three Sunday morning services. Inspiring worship, beautiful music and authentic hospitality await every soul. More people walk through the Cathedral doors during the week than on Sunday. The Cathedral's noonday Holy Eucharist serves commuters throughout the week.
The Cathedral’s history is one of enjoying booms, surviving busts, and God always being faithful.
Since 1982 the Cathedral has expanded its campus 100 percent, quadrupled regular Sunday attendance to four hundred, and established an endowment. St. Paul’s has an annual operating budget of over one million dollars. The Cathedral houses a food pantry and emergency assistance service, the Guild of St. George, that serves 4,500 needy families a year. The Cathedral provides space for A.A. meetings, community music programs and serves as a location for the opening ceremony of the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. parade.
Immediately following the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995 St. Paul's became a triage site, fed numerous rescue workers, and provided a spiritual sanctuary for all seeking comfort and peace.
In the early 1990's the Cathedral purchased an adjacent junkyard and converted the lot into a child-friendly garden. After the bombing of the Murrah building the children of St. Paul's planted a weeping willow tree in the garden in memory of the children killed.
Eventually St. Paul's purchased the old auto body shop adjacent to the garden and built the Dean Back Building, now the center of administration and the home of the Guild of St. George. A million dollar garden renovation and columbarium construction project was completed in the spring of 2011.
Our stone cross was an old cross when the Cathedral was new in 1903. It was likely donated from a northeastern church. It stood atop the Cathedral façade for almost a hundred years. On April 19, 1995 it was broken by the Murrah Building bombing. An arm fell off at the time of the blast. A local dentist, Dr. Nelson Smith, photographed the remaining stone through a telescopic lens. It was from this photograph that we discovered the extensive damage. The remaining cross, though broken into many parts, remained standing.
This cross became known as ‘The Broken Cross.’ This image became our central symbol and the logo for our Cathedral Restoration. It proclaimed, that although deeply broken, we are profoundly alive as the Body of Christ. It would be over seven years and over seven million dollars before the Cathedral facilities would be restored. A local artist and member of our Cathedral parish, Nick Irza, offered to cast the image of the Broken Cross into silver. He made them available for sale with a portion of the income going to the Cathedral.