St. Saviour’s Pro-Cathedral
DESCRIPTION OF HISTORIC PLACE
St. Saviour’s Pro-Cathedral is a stone and woodframe gable-roofed church on the southeast corner of the intersection of Ward and Silica Streets in the Uphill neighbourhood of Nelson, B.C.
HERITAGE VALUE
The building is primarily important for being perhaps Nelson’s most impressive church building, and for its contribution to the sense that the city had arrived as the Kootenay region’s powerful economic and administrative centre, with a large and respectable middle class population.
The site is important for its continued use since 1892 as the home of the city’s Anglican congregants, originally in a temporary Mission Room under the direction of the first missionary priest-in-charge, the Reverend A. J. Reid. With the laying of St. Saviour’s cornerstone in 1898, the earlier wooden building was replaced by the current Pro-Cathedral structure, completed in 1899, and later rebuilt above its original stonework after the 1928 fire.
The 1898 church, designed by the architect George D. Curtis, is an excellent example of Gothic Perpendicular church architecture. Its impressive size and detailing made the building a stand-out among its contemporary Protestant churches, which were generally much smaller, and very simply detailed, and is a symbol of the determination of the pioneers of Nelson to build a city of great stature, the “Queen City”.
Its 1929 reconstruction largely conformed to the original Pro-Cathedral design, but is particularly notable for the memorial stained glass windows and the pipe organ (donated by Le Baron de Veber in memory of Lorne Campbell), the Redeemer Chapel and a columbarium. More recent restoration work to the church roof and the remarkable Good Shepherd stained glass window (donated by Selwyn G. Blaylock) in the Sanctuary is evidence of a continued commitment to the careful conservation of the building.
Located with many other churches in the lower reaches of the well-appointed residential streets of the Uphill neighbourhood, St. Saviour’s is a valuable contributor to the physical transition between the large commercial buildings of the commercial core and the houses of its white-collar workers, both because of its substantial size and institutional character.
The church is important for its complete rebuilding of the wood portions after its burning in 1928, a testament to both the quality of the tradesmen in town, and the enduring central role of the church in community life during the interwar and both the World Wars.
From the City of Nelson Heritage Register, Page 42