Spire spires were an astounding architectural innovation, beginning with the early fourteenth-century spire at Freiburg Minster, in which the pierced stonework was held together by iron cramps. The openwork spire, according to Robert Bork, represents a "radical but logical extension of the Gothic tendency towards skeletal structure." The organic skeleton of Antoni Gaudi's phenomenal spires at the Sagrada Família in Barcelona represent an outgrowth of this Gothic tendency. Designed and begun by Gaudi in 1884, they were not completed until the 20th century. In England, "spire" immediately brings to mind Salisbury Cathedral. Its 403-foot (123-m) spire, built between 1320 and 1380,
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (Saint John, New Brunswick) winter of 1852-53, the foundation stone was laid in May 1853 and walls were erected and a roof laid by November 1853. The blessing and first mass in the new cathedral were celebrated on Christmas Day. The task of completing the cathedral fell to Bishop J. Sweeney, the third Bishop of New Brunswick between 1861 and 1865. The spire was erected in 1871. It has a height of 230 feet to the top of the cross, equal to some 300 feet above sea level and about the highest point in the city. In the interior of the edifice the extreme