St. Paul Church, Cambridge
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
St. Paul Church is a parish of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston and is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The three main roles of this church are:
- Parish church serving the needs of the local community as well as visitors to Harvard Square
- Home of the Boston Archdiocesan Choir School whose students make up the Boston Boy Choir
- Home of the Harvard Catholic Student Association (CSA)
St. Paul Parish was one of many parishes in the area founded by Fr. Manasses Dougherty largely in response to the influx of Irish Catholics to the Boston area in the late 19th century. The original St. Paul Church building, a former meeting house of the Shepherd Congregational Society on the site of what is now Holyoke Center, was purchased by Fr. Dougherty in 1873. The cornerstone for the present church building, an Italian Romanesque monument located at Quincy Square, was laid in November 1916 under the leadership of then pastor Rev. John J. Ryan. The architect was Edward T. P. Graham, a St. Paul parishioner, graduate of Harvard, and winner of the first Traveling Fellowship to Rome and the École des Beaux-Arts. Graham used Verona's Basilica of San Zeno Maggiore and Torre del Commune as inspirations. The new church building, which was dedicated in October 1924, was at the same site as the St. Paul School, which had been built some years before. By the mid-1960s, enrollment had declined and the parish school was replaced by the Choir School. In the 1990s, the original school building was torn down and replaced with a multi-purpose building attached to the church, which houses the rectory, parish offices, the choir school and the Harvard Catholic student center.
