Old St. Patrick's Church

The church became a cathedral because Rome redrew the map around it. The Vicariate of Brownsville was raised to the Diocese of Corpus Christi in 1912, and the Passionist Paul Joseph Nussbaum, a Philadelphian who had spent seventeen years as a missionary in Brazil and Argentina, became its first bishop in 1913. He doubled the diocese's parochial schools and pleaded for priests, but two hurricanes, drought, the 1919 influenza epidemic and refugee clergy from Mexico wore him down. He resigned in 1920 and in 1923 became bishop of Marquette, Michigan.

What the plaque says

Old St. Patrick's Church St. Patrick's parish included only 19 families when the Rev. Bernard O'Reilly (1821-75) became first resident pastor in 1853. He supervised construction of Corpus Christi's first Catholic Church. The adobe building stood on Tancahua Street property donated by Henry L. Kinney. In 1880 construction was begun on a larger building, located at the same site but facing Karankawa Street. Designed by architect Charles Carroll, a parish member who donated his services, the second St. Patrick's was a frame structure with two towers. Bells for the church were given by Mifflin Kenedy, whose wife was a parishioner. Dedicated in November 1882, the church soon became a Corpus Christi landmark. For many years, services were held in both English and Spanish. St. Patrick's was designated a cathedral March 23, 1912, during the pastorate of the Rev. Claude Jaillet (1843-1929), who served there for 30 years. Growth of the congregation and fire damage to the frame church in 1938 prompted construction of the present Corpus Christi Cathedral. Erected on property donated by the John Kenedy family, the Spanish Colonial style edifice was dedicated July 17, 1940. The old frame structure was dismantled in 1951 and used in building Our Lady Star of the Sea Church on East Causeway Blvd. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mirador de la Flor — 0.4 mi
  Corpus Christi's bayfront memorial to Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, the Tejano singer from this city, killed in 1995 at twenty-three, visited by about thirty thousand people a year.
• Art Museum of South Texas — 1.1 mi
  Philip Johnson's 1972 museum on the Corpus Christi bayfront, joined in 2006 by Ricardo Legorreta's Miller Wing, holding more than 2,000 works mostly from Texas and the Americas.
• Texas State Aquarium — 1.3 mi
  A nonprofit aquarium on the tip of Corpus Christi Beach built around the Gulf and the Caribbean, with the largest coastal wildlife rescue center in Texas behind the exhibits.
• USS Lexington Museum on the Bay — 1.5 mi
  An Essex-class carrier of 1943 moored off North Beach, the Blue Ghost that Tokyo Rose kept reporting sunk, and the Navy's training carrier for nearly three decades after.

More markers nearby

• Site of Kinney's Trading Post — steps away
• Lone Star Fair — steps away
• The Ranchero — steps away
• Confederate Army Deserters Hanged in Corpus Christi — steps away