Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul

The Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul stands at the center of Catholic Providence, its twin granite towers rising over Cathedral Square since eighteen seventy-eight. Designed by Patrick Keely, the prolific Irish-American architect who drew the plans for nearly six hundred Catholic churches across America, the building seats over a thousand and anchors the Diocese of Providence, established in eighteen seventy-two. It was built to serve the enormous wave of Irish and French Canadian immigrants who flooded Rhode Island's mill cities in the decades after the Civil War. Consecrated in eighteen eighty-nine, it remains the mother church of Rhode Island Catholicism and one of the finest Gothic Revival buildings in New England.