Set back on a raised, open forecourt facing Abercorn Street, the cathedral’s white stuccoed brick facade with twin 214-foot towers stands in stark contrast to all other buildings in Savannah and yet seems comfortably at home here in this Southern port city. Catholics, who were originally banned from the colony, had become numerous enough by 1850 for Pope Pius IX to establish the Diocese of Savannah. The second site of the church of St. John the Baptist (founded c. 1796), a brick building on Drayton and Perry streets, originally served as the cathedral until the present Gothic Revival building was completed in 1876. The interior, almost totally destroyed by fire in 1898, was rebuilt between 1898 and 1914. Although there is no clerestory, the Latin cross-plan interior is bright and lively with polychrome stenciled decoration mainly on the ceiling and along the upper walls. The nave rises 66 feet on marbleized cast-iron columns to false ribbed vaults of iron- and wood-truss construction. The Renaissance-styled murals of biblical scenes, installed in 1912, were designed by Savannah artist Christopher Murphy and painted by Paul Gutsche and a team of artists in New York. The stained glass windows are mostly Austrian made. A Noack tracker organ was installed in 1987 in the gallery below the rose window, which is dedicated to St. Cecelia. Connected to the apse of the cathedral by a loggia-like bridge is the bishop’s residence (1888, W. F. Chaplin), which incorporates forms and motifs modeled directly from those of the cathedral. The most recent and extensive restoration, conducted by Kansas City-based J. E. Dunn Construction and Savannah’s Rives E. Worrell Company, installed a new slate roof and a monumental baptismal font, carved in Carrara, Italy, with a design modeled on details of the cathedral’s reredos and high altar.