St. Patrick Roman Catholic Church 1840 New Orleans, Louisiana

The visitor has much to see. Leon Pomarede, a young French artist, did the huge murals behind the main altar in 1841 for $1,000 each a large sum of money in thoses days. These are masterpieces. Once a French newspaper observed that if the artist had been executing such work in a Paris church, crowds would have gathered each day to watch him. The center mural is The Transfiguration, flanked by Christ Walking on the Water on the right, and St. Patrick himself baptizing the princess daughters of Ireland’s King Laoghaire, on the left.

St. Patrick's Church is a beautiful Gothic Revival Catholic church and parish in the Archdiocese of New Orleans. The parish was founded in 1833, and the current structure was completed in 1840. It is the second oldest parish in New Orleans (the oldest parish is St. Louis Cathedral), located upriver from the French Quarter at 724 Camp Street in what is now the Central Business District.



The first major neighborhood development in New Orleans outside of the Creole Vieux Carré was Faubourg St. Mary, begun after 1788; the area is now the core of the Central Business District and Warehouse District. The Faubourg came to be known as the "American Quarter," as differentiated from the French Quarter. It was in this section that Americans built their homes and business establishments and distinguished their lifestyles from those of the Creoles residing in the original city limits. Irish immigration in the early nineteenth century brought English-speaking Catholics to the Creole city, many of whom settled in the new commercial district of Faubourg St. Mary. The religious and linguistic demographics of the city were changing; Catholicism in New Orleans had been dominated by the French Creoles, descendants of the French and Spanish settlers of the previous century. Good Catholic Irish immigrants squirmed in the rear pews of the old French Cathedral on Jackson Square where God appeared to speak only in French. By the 1830s, a Catholic church was needed for those who did not speak French.

Its early construction date, size, and interior decortation make St. Patrick's one of the most noteworthy American examples of the Gothic Revival style. It was designed in 1837 by James and Charles Dakin; the interiors, the work of James Gallier, Sr., were completed in 1840.

In 1833, Bishop Leo-Raymond de Neckere established a new parish in Faubourg St. Mary, St. Patrick's Church and built a small wooden church. In a short time it was filled to overflowing at every Sunday Mass. The Irish then began building a grand church, one that would rival the Cathedral. And indeed, it did. Construction of a permanent church building began later in the decade and was completed in 1840. Construction began around the existing wooden church which was dismantled and carried out when the new edifice was completed.


The new church was of Gothic Revival style in elegant details, with a ceiling imitating Exeter Cathedral. The church with a fairly simple exterior but a highly ornate interior. Doorways, windows, the organ, and the altar all conform to architectural design. The tower is 185 feet high, the vestibule 40 feet, the nave 85 feet. some nineteenth century aerial views of New Orleans were painted from its roof. It was a triumph in Gothic comparable to any parochial structure of its kind in Europe. The interior of the nave is 85 feet (26 m) tall. Slender columns support the fan vaulting of the ceiling, which is particularly elaborate above the altar, incorporating sixteen stained glass windows in a half-dome. Three large paintings above the altar depict, from left to right: Saint Patrick, the Transfiguration of Jesus, and Jesus Christ pulling Saint Peter from the sea.

When some churches were taking statues out, St. Patrick’s historic collection was being preserved. The cypress pews and the carved wooden pulpit were returned to their former elegance. The murals behind the main altar were completely restored in a manner similar to the restoration of the paintings in the Sistine Chapel.

The architect of St. Patrick's was James Dakin from New York, who designed a number of buildings in Louisiana, including the Old State Capitol in Baton Rouge. But there were construction problems in the swampy area related to the city's notoriously high water table. The foundation was found to be defective in part. So the church hired James Gallier, an Irish architect who came to New Orleans in 1834, to complete the building. The walls of the tower were settling at one side. Gallier accomplished a remarkable feat of engineering skill. He removed the old foundation, replacing it with a new one, without pulling down the walls. During the 1849-1851 rebuilding of St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter , the church was named pro-cathedral of the diocese.

The wood plaster details are sights to behold and the gorgeous fan vaulting above the altar is a unique display of fine stained glass.

The wood plaster details are sights to behold and the gorgeous fan vaulting above the altar is a unique display of fine stained glass.

Shortly after the church's establishment the mostly Irish parish saw anti-immigrant violence involving the Know Nothing Party/The American Republican Party. Father James Mullon, whose portrait hangs in the back of the church, was pastor at the time and held significant clout in the city. Many Anglo-Saxons activists feared that he and the Irish were taking control of New Orleans from the establishment. Immigration in America during the first five years of the 1850's reached a level five times greater than a decade earlier. Most of the new arrivals were poor Catholic peasants or laborers from Ireland and Germany who crowded into the tenements of large cities. Crime and welfare costs soared. Cincinnati's crime rate, for example, tripled between 1846 and 1853 and its murder rate increased sevenfold. Boston's expenditures for poor relief rose threefold during the same period.

St. Patrick's remained an anchor of the local Church throughout the events of the tumultuous decades that followed, including the infamous occupation of the city by Union troops under the unpopular Major General Benjamin Butler during the American Civil War. During the war, the outspoken Mullon, who had been pastor by then for decades, was accosted by Butler for refusing to preside at the funeral of a Union soldier. Mullon responded, in a moment of local lore, by apologizing and remarking that he would gladly preside at the funerals of Butler and all the Union troops.

Christ Walking on the Water

The wood plaster details are sights to behold and the gorgeous fan vaulting above the altar is a unique display of fine stained glass.

The murals behind the main altar were completely restored in a manner similar to the restoration of the paintings in the Sistine Chapel.

St. Patrick himself baptizing the princess daughters of Ireland’s King Laoghaire

Top of the original Gothic Revival Altar

The Transfiguration

Christ Walking on the Water

The new church was of Gothic style in elegant details, with a ceiling imitating Exeter Cathedral.

The church building was named a National Historic Landmark in 1975 by the Department of the Interior, setting it apart as a special American edifice of importance. A major restoration, lasting from 1978 to 1990, preserved the structure so that the parish could continue to serve the people of New Orleans as it had for 170 years.