The Cathedral of Saint Paul

The Cathedral of Saint Paul sits at the top of Summit Avenue's west end, on a rise that makes it visible from much of the eastern half of the city. It was designed by Emmanuel Louis Masqueray, a French-trained Beaux-Arts architect who came to Saint Paul specifically for this commission. The cornerstone was laid in nineteen seven. The cathedral was completed in nineteen fifteen, though it was not formally consecrated until nineteen fifty-eight.

Masqueray modeled the exterior dome on Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, though smaller in scale, and the overall form on the Pantheon tradition of domed classical churches. The dome rises to a height of about one hundred eighty-six feet. The building seats three thousand people and is one of the largest Catholic cathedrals in the United States.

Emmanuel Masqueray died in nineteen seventeen, before the cathedral was fully finished. He is buried in a crypt beneath the building he designed.

The cathedral sits at one end of Summit Avenue, one of the longest stretches of intact Victorian residential architecture in the United States. The avenue runs from the cathedral at its west end four and a half miles east, past the governor's mansion, past blocks of brownstone and limestone houses built during the period when Saint Paul was one of the wealthiest cities per capita in the United States. The Summit Avenue houses are listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district. F. Scott Fitzgerald grew up on Summit Avenue, and his connection to the neighborhood runs through his early fiction, including This Side of Paradise, which he finished revising while living in Saint Paul in nineteen nineteen, ahead of its nineteen twenty publication.