You are here

Texas: Central, South, and Gulf Coast » South Texas » Laredo (Webb County) » San Agustín Catholic Cathedral

San Agustín Catholic Cathedral

-A A +A
1872, Father Pierre Yves Kéralum. 201 San Agustín Ave.
  • (Photograph by Gerald Moorhead)

The church faces the plaza in the Spanish urban tradition. The third church on this site, it was built by Oblate priest-architect Kéralum, who also designed the church in Brownsville ( BS9). The outline of the second church of 1789 is laid out in the pavement in front of San Agustín. Its small size reflects the diminutive scale of early Laredo when compared with the more sizeable late-eighteenth-century religious buildings of nearby Guerrero and Mier on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. The narrow Gothic Revival nave of San Agustín, constructed in plastered sandstone, was completed in 1872. Its 1877 bell tower became Laredo's version of London's Big Ben when it was heightened in 1922 with a four-faced clock level that was visible from Nuevo Laredo. Next door at 201 San Agustín Avenue, the former San Agustín Parochial School (1927) by Leo M. J. Dielmann is a three-story Gothic Revival structure built to meet the demand for educational services created by the influx of immigration caused by the Mexican Revolution, which doubled the population of Laredo in less than a decade.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Gerald Moorhead et al.
×

Data

What's Nearby

Casa Reyes Ortíz
Republic of the Rio Grande Museum (Bártolo García House)
San Agustín Plaza
Benavides-Herrera House
Benavides-Vidaurri House

Citation

Gerald Moorhead et al., "San Agustín Catholic Cathedral", [Laredo, Texas], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/TX-01-LA2.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of Texas

Buildings of Texas: Central, South, and Gulf Coast, Gerald Moorhead and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013, 269-269.

If SAH Archipedia has been useful to you, please consider supporting it.

SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment. But the Society of Architectural Historians, which created SAH Archipedia with University of Virginia Press, needs your support to maintain the high-caliber research, writing, photography, cartography, editing, design, and programming that make SAH Archipedia a trusted online resource available to all who value the history of place, heritage tourism, and learning.

,