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The new parish of St. Francis Xavier was sufficiently prosperous in the 1880s to build an imposing rectory for its founding priest, Father Jean Audet, who resided here until his death in 1918. Appropriately for a French-speaking parish, the rectory is Second Empire in style interpreted through a Canadian rather than an American approach. The two-story main block is brick with flanking one-bay wings and a central gabled entrance porch that supports a bay window. The windows are tall French casements rather than American sashes and have segmental brick-arched heads picked out with the polychromy of marble imposts and keystones. Twin verandas spread from the vestibule, their cornice and brackets echoed by the weightier ones beneath the deep eaves of the roof. The mansard is metal-sheathed with a flared lower zone cut by gabled dormers and a hip that supports a bracketed and mansarded belvedere topped by a tall finial with a cock weathervane, a French Canadian tradition. While the metalwork was by Joseph Lanou, all that is known of the building's designer is that he was certainly acquainted with forms and tastes north of the border.