Archives and Records
1846: St. James Church, Vancouver
The St. James Mission was originally part of Fort Vancouver, a permanent trading post of the Hudson’s Bay Company. A census taken in 1838—seven years before the first church was built at the fort—counted 76 Catholics, including French-Canadians and Iroquois, some of whom had not celebrated Mass for many years. A simple wooden church was built and dedicated in 1846, and beginning in 1850 Bishop A. M. A. Blanchet used the small St. James church as his residence upon the establishment of the Diocese of Nesqually.
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“St. James Mission, Vancouver, Washington Territory, from plan drawn in 1866 by J. B. Blanchet.” The pro-cathedral is shown in the foreground. |
After the wooden church was vacated (it was later destroyed by a fire in 1889), the Gothic-style cathedral was built under the direction of the Aegidius Junger, the second Bishop of Nesqually. Construction was spearheaded by the Rev. Louis Schram, pastor and vicar general; Mother Joseph, superior of the Sisters of Providence; and by J.B. Blanchet, nephew of the two Bishops Blanchet. The cornerstone of the new structure was laid in 1884, and the St. James Cathedral in Vancouver was dedicated in 1885.
The immense cathedral of brick and stone—its main altar and Stations of the Cross all carved in oak from Belgium—had a seating capacity of 900. In 1907, Bishop Edward J. O’Dea moved the See of the Diocese of Nesqually from Vancouver to Seattle. The cathedral in Vancouver became the parish church of St. James.
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