San Agustín Cathedral

San Agustín is older than the town's streets. A resident priest arrived in 1760 to serve a small mission chapel, and in 1778 the settlers built the first stone church, big enough for more than two hundred families. In 1789 the Bishop of Guadalajara made it a parish, when Laredo was still a Spanish villa on the Rio Grande.

The church you see was begun in 1866 and opened on December 12, 1872. It is a masonry Gothic Revival building with pointed stained-glass windows between its masonry bays and a five-story bell and clock tower rising about 141 feet over the plaza. Storm damage cracked the front wall in 1905, and repairs were not finished until 1912. A new altar area and sacristies were added in 1946, and a restoration society spent $675,000 on repairs in 1989-94, which also brought a brick plaza at the front.

Pope John Paul II created the Diocese of Laredo in 2000 and named San Agustín its cathedral. A rehabilitation reported in 2022 enlarged the altar by about 40 percent so that forty to fifty priests could gather for the Chrism Mass. This is a living parish, with Mass on the calendar, so visit quietly and check the schedule before walking in. The cathedral faces San Agustín Plaza, and the district around it is on the National Register.