St. Patrick Cathedral Complex - Fort Worth, Texas
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txoilgas
N 32° 44.931 W 097° 19.795
14S E 656461 N 3624678
The St. Patrick Cathedral complex, in the heart of the Fort Worth business district, consists of three buildings: the church, the rectory, and the St. Ignatius Academy building. St. Patrick Cathedral has the distinction of being among the oldest buildings in Fort Worth and is the city's oldest continuously used church building.
Waymark Code: WM7C4M
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 10/03/2009
Views: 14
from the Handbook of Texas
The parish began in 1876, when Bishop Claude M. Dubuis of Galveston assigned Father Thomas Loughrey to Fort Worth as its first resident priest. Within three months a small frame parish church had been erected and dedicated to the Polish Jesuit Saint Stanislaus Kostka. In 1884 Father Jean Marie Guyot replaced Father Loughrey as pastor, and by 1888 the cornerstone for a new church had been blessed and laid in place. The new church, to be located just a few feet north of St. Stanislaus, was renamed St. Patrick by vote of the congregation. The Gothic Revival structure, designed by architect J. J. Kane and constructed of native limestone, was dedicated July 10, 1892, by the first bishop of Dallas, Thomas F. Brennan. Father Guyot died in 1907; his body is interred in the basement crypt of the church. The old St. Stanislaus church was converted into a parish hall and day school. In about 1908 it was removed to make room for what is now the rectory.
In 1885, at the invitation of Father Guyot, the Belgian Sisters of St. Mary of Namur arrived in Fort Worth to teach the parish children and to open their own boarding school for young ladies, St. Ignatius Academy. During its first few years the Academy was organized in two small houses purchased by the order and located on property adjacent to the church. The school grew rapidly, and in 1889 the sisters completed a three-story French Empire school building immediately south of the old church. By 1910 there was no more room for St. Ignatius to expand. The order purchased land several miles south of the downtown area and built another school, Our Lady of Victory, to be used as a high school for the older students. They continued to operate the Academy as a Catholic school until 1956, when it was sold to the parish. The building was being used as the religious education facility and parish hall in the early 1990s. The church attained the rank of co-cathedral on December 8, 1953, when the name of the Diocese of Dallas was changed to the Diocese of Dallas-Fort Worth. When the Diocese of Fort Worth was founded August 22, 1969, St. Patrick's became the seat of the new diocese. The church and academy were recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1962, and in 1985 the cathedral complex was enrolled in the National Register of Historic Places. The Texas Historical Commission in 1990 approved a Texas historical marker for the site of St. Stanislaus Church.
Street address:
1206 and 1208 Throckmorton Street
Fort Worth, Texas USA
76133
County / Borough / Parish: county
Year listed: 1985
Historic (Areas of) Significance: Architecture/Engineering, Event
Periods of significance: 1875-1899, 1900-1924
Historic function: Religion
Current function: Religion
Privately owned?: yes
Primary Web Site: [Web Link]
Secondary Website 1: [Web Link]
Season start / Season finish: Not listed
Hours of operation: Not listed
Secondary Website 2: Not listed
National Historic Landmark Link: Not listed
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Visit Instructions:
Please give the date and brief account of your visit. Include any additional observations or information that you may have, particularly about the current condition of the site. Additional photos are highly encouraged, but not mandatory.