Historical Marker
St. Patrick Catholic Church
Galveston, Galveston County · Texas
Erected 1996
The architect Nicholas Clayton was born in County Cork, Ireland, in 1839 and grew up in Cincinnati. He served as a yeoman in the Union Navy from 1862 to 1865, reached Galveston in 1872 to supervise a Presbyterian church, and stayed. The Handbook of Texas dates his work on St. Patrick's to 1874-77, with reconstruction in 1901-02, and calls the island's building boom decades the Clayton Era. His practice declined sharply after 1900, partly because of a long lawsuit he brought over the 1897 county courthouse commission.
What the plaque says
St. Patrick Catholic Church Galveston Bishop C. M. Dubuis established this parish in 1870 to serve Catholics in Galveston Island's fast-growing west end district. A wood sanctuary was built at this site and the mostly Irish congregation named the church for St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. The Rev. Laurence Glynn arrived in 1871, a few days after storms had destroyed the sanctuary. He rallied the congregation and by 1877 an impressive Gothic structure, designed by noted architect and church member Nicholas J. Clayton, was completed. A parish school was established in the 1880s. After the storm of 1900 the U. S. Corps of Engineers mandated that Galveston Island be elevated, and between 1905 and 1907 the massive St. Patrick Church building was lifted five feet onto a new foundation. Two mission churches were founded by St. Patrick Church; Our Lady of Guadalupe Church became its own parish in 1927, and Queen of Peace Church continued as a mission of St. Patrick Church. In the late 1980s the parish elementary schools were consolidated. The school facilities at St. Patrick were converted for parish offices, religious education, and social events. The congregation continues its traditional role as a leading Catholic institution for Galveston Island. (1996)
Where it stands
29.29587, -94.80451 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Moody Mansion — 0.6 miA four-story, 28,000-square-foot house on Broadway, finished in 1895, that W. L. Moody Jr. bought just after the 1900 storm and his family kept until Hurricane Alicia in 1983.
- 1859 Ashton Villa — 0.8 miA brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.
- The Strand — 1.0 miFive blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.
- Texas Seaport Museum and the Elissa — 1.2 miAn iron barque launched in Aberdeen in 1877 that called at Galveston twice, ended up smuggling in the Adriatic, and was bought back from a Greek scrapyard to sail again from Pier 22.