Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception

Two years after the Great Fire of April 1910 devastated much of Lake Charles, destroying the church building, other parish structures, and neighboring buildings and homes, construction began on what stands today. The parish had organized in 1869 as St. Francis de Sales, received its first resident priest that year, and rebuilt as Immaculate Conception after an 1879 hurricane damaged the original church. The 1910 fire took that building too. The firm Favrot & Livaudais of New Orleans designed the replacement in a regional Romanesque Revival style typical of Lombardy. The church, attached rectory, and garage were completed in 1913. Three marble altars in the Gothic style were installed in 1923—acquired from a church in Salt Lake City that was remodeling. Around 1950, marble wainscot was added to the side aisles and chancel, the nave columns were sheathed in marble, and a marble pulpit was installed. A rubble stone grotto containing a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary was added in 1948. In 1973, the architectural firm of Dunn and Quinn completed a brick wing on the northeast side, designed to match the Romanesque architecture, with a small chapel and a courtyard between the addition and the church. On January 29, 1980, Pope John Paul II established the Diocese of Lake Charles. Immaculate Conception became the cathedral for the new diocese—the mother church, the bishop's seat. The building itself did not change. What it carried did. The National Register of Historic Places listed it in 1994, recognizing its architectural significance. It is the only Romanesque Revival building in Lake Charles, and one of only ten architecturally noteworthy non-residential buildings left in the city after a demolition and modernization campaign from the 1950s to the 1970s. Hurricane Laura struck Lake Charles on August 27, 2020, with gusts reaching 137 mph. The cathedral and the diocesan chancery building sustained roof damage; the chancery became uninhabitable. Hurricane Delta followed weeks later. The church enshrines a century-old image of the Blessed Virgin Mary made of Carrara marble, granted a canonical coronation by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. A full renovation was completed in 2019, the year before the storms came. You go to see the only Romanesque Revival building in a city that has burned and been struck by hurricanes and rebuilt each time. The form is Lombardy by way of New Orleans, completed in 1913, elevated to cathedral in 1980. It stands in the Charpentier Historic District, part of what endured.