Cathedral of St. John the Baptist (Savannah)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist

The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist is a Catholic cathedral in Savannah, Georgia, located at 222 East Harris Street.

[edit] History

The Congrégation de Saint Jean-Baptiste was established by French emigrants as Savannah's first parish at the end of the 18th century. They went to Savannah after an uprising in Haiti, and many were French nobles fleeing the French Revolution.

On May 30, 1800, the first church building was built on a plot on Liberty Square given to the congregation by the city a year earlier. By 1804, the church was petitioning for more room, but the city could not grant it as there were no empty lots. On August 2, 1811 though, the city granted a petition for a large parcel at Montgomery and Hull, but the church was never built there. Instead, it was built at Drayton and Perry.

In 1876, another new building was built along Harris between Abercorn and Lincoln. In 1898, this structure caught fire and was almost completely destroyed. The then-bishop of Savannah, Thomas A. Becker, said, while looking at the devastation, "The Cathedral must be rebuilt, and as soon as possible."

The reconstructed church was completed in late 1899 and held its first mass on December 24 of that year. It was dedicated on October 28, 1900 by Archbishop Sebastian Martinelli. The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist remains one of the largest church buildings in the South.

Between 1959 and 1963, the building went through a major renovation. The building was upgraded to include modern heating, cooling, lighting, a new plaza, a new pulpit, and a new altar rail. From 1984-1985, the building was again renovated by replacing the old, crumbling wooden foundation of the building with a reinforced concrete one. From September 1998-November 2000, the cathedral's slate roof was replaced, 50 stained glass windows were releaded, and the interior was restored. ^[1]