It’s fitting that the Succession funeral episode—in which media titan Logan Roy (Brian Cox) was laid to rest—was filmed at Manhattan’s Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, a Roman Catholic cathedral that has seen its share of real VIP send-offs. Luminaries including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis—who was baptized and confirmed at the Jesuit parish, although she regularly attended mass closer to home at the Gothic Revival–style Church of St. Thomas More—Governor Mario Cuomo, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Oscar de la Renta, Lena Horne, and Aaliyah were all posthumously honored at the stately Park Avenue landmark named after an influential Spanish Jesuit priest. Grace Kelly was another of the Upper East Side Italian Renaissance–style church’s notable parishioners—even after her marriage to Monaco’s Prince Rainier. A small bronze plaque in row 62 of the church notes that on February 10, 1963, “John F. Kennedy 35th President attended Mass in this pew.†The exterior of the St. Ignatius Of Loyola church is seen here during the 2014 funeral of Oscar de la Renta. Logan’s service drew its own high-profile crowd. In addition to his offspring—Connor (Alan Ruck), Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin), and Shiv (Sarah Snook); wives—Marcia (Hiam Abbass) and Caroline (Harriet Walter); and mistresses—Kerry (Zoe Winters) and Sally-Anne (Nicole Ansari-Cox), both of whom Caroline installs in the first pew; there are Waystar C-suiters, business associates like GoJo CEO Lukas Matsson (Alexander SkarsgÃ¥rd), and even the possible president-elect Jeryd Mencken (Justin Kirk). Cocky Roman, who claims to have “pre-grieved†his father’s death, sees the event as an opportunity to shore up alliances. “I still think we need to get the board and the brass rallying ’round the old orphans here, don’t you think?†he asks Kendall. But his brother can only see the “many fucking money changers in the temple,†as he says to Shiv. St. Ignatius Loyola truly is the parish of New York’s Catholic upper crust. But its original congregants were newly arrived Irish immigrants who first worshiped in a humble wooden structure built in 1852 and then in a modest brick Romanesque-style building that almost bankrupted the church. After the Jesuits assumed control of the parish in 1866, pennies were pinched until a newly designed building by architectural firm Schickel and Ditmars could be erected above the older church. The limestone exterior of the cathedral, which resembles Rome’s 16th-century Jesuit Church of the Gesù, was completed in 1900 and features three doorways between doric pilasters, a central palladian arched window flanked by two pediment windows, and two copper-capped tower bases on either side of a central pediment. (The original design called for the bases to hold a pair of towers that were never built.) The Jesuit motto: Ad majorem dei gloriam (“To the greater glory of Godâ€) is carved into the stone below the pediment. The Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola was declared a New York City Landmark in 1969 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. A pair of 12-panel bronze doors lead to a sanctuary filled with intricate marble work in varieties including pink Tennessee, red-veined Numidian, yellow Sienna, pink Algerian, white Carrara, and Pavonazzo; pink granite columns; marble mosaic Italian-made Stations of the Cross; Jesuit saints cast in Carrara marble; stained-glass windows; and a baptistery altar and surround of Pavonazzo marble inlaid with Favrile glass mosaics designed and crafted by the then Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company’s ecclesiastical department. Tiffany also crafted the baptistery’s semidome. Later in the episode, Logan is laid to rest in a mausoleum worthy of a billionaire. In the elegant nave, strains of St. Ignatius Loyola’s prized possession—a 30-ton mechanical tracker Mander pipe organ with 5,000 pipes housed in a 44-foot-tall French oak organ case—can be heard as Greg (Nicholas Braun)—who has left Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) at the ATN office and is so late to the funeral that he rides a Citibike there—fails to keep his grandfather Ewan (James Cromwell) from ascending the altar platform for a speech. Ewan reveals some of his brother’s traumatic childhood, but nevertheless believes Logan “has wrought the most terrible things.†When Roman next stands at the simple wood pulpit to deliver his rehearsed eulogy, he breaks down, the weight of the loss suddenly hitting him. It’s left to Kendall (“People might want to… denigrate…that magnificent awful force of him. But my God, I hope it’s in meâ€) and Shiv (“When he let you in, when the sun shone, it was warm in the light. But it was hard to be his daughter. He was hard on womenâ€) to honor their father—before they vie to replace him. © 2023 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Architectural Digest may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices
