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St. Mary's serves the oldest Catholic parish in Virginia, founded in 1788. George Washington contributed to the building fund for an earlier church located elsewhere. The present building began as a Greek Revival structure, but in 1881, Dwyer, a local architect only twenty-one years old, began making alterations that culminated in the stone Gothic Revival western front, tourelle, and tower. Two German glass firms, Franz Mayer and F. X. Zettler, made most of the stained glass.