St. Paul's Catholic Church (San Francisco)

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St. Paul's Catholic Church, or Parroquia De San Pablo is a parish of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco. The parish is located in the city of San Francisco, California, at Church and Valley Street in the city's Noe Valley neighborhood.

[edit] History

St. Paul's traces its history back to 1876 when George Shadbourne communicated a desire to Archbishop Joseph Alemany to have a new parish established, as well as a willingness to help collect money, purchase land, and construct a parish church. Archbishop Alemany approved the request, and in 1880 a church building and a residence for the pastor was built. This first church, which seated up to 750 people served approximately 200 families. By 1897 growth led the parish to begin construction on the current 1,400 seat English Gothic structure. Construction took 14 years because the parish used pay as you go financing on the new structure - a benefit of this was that the parish had no construction debt when the church was finished.. The new church was dedicated on May 29, 1911 by Archbishop Patrick Riordan.

Because of the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, seismic reinforcement of buildings started to be required. At one point the Archdiocese seriously considered closing St. Paul's because of the potential costs of reinforcing the church and adjacent buildings, however the Archdiocese later reversed this decision. The parish sold some of the adjacent buildings, and reinforced the remaining buildings - all of which cost approximately $8.5 million dollars.^[1]

In 1992, the parish became the site of filming for the comedy movie Sister Act. While the parish is actually in the upscale middle class neighborhood of Noe Valley, the surrounding area was redressed to make it appear that the parish was in a much poorer neighborhood.