Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Cathedral — Biloxi

The Great Biloxi Fire of November 1900 took the original church. Theodore Brune, a German-American architect who had already designed several churches on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, drew up a Gothic replacement for the same West Howard Avenue site. J.F. Barnes & Company of Greenville, Mississippi, built it in 1902. The cathedral sits on a coast where Catholicism arrived before the United States existed. Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville landed on Ship Island in 1699, then arrived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast three days later, establishing a colony and building Fort Maurepas — the first capital of French Louisiana. The fort became a base for further exploration, though the settlement struggled with crop failure, illness, and lack of fresh water. The capital moved to Mobile by 1701, and the fort was abandoned by 1702. Still, French settlers had already put down roots. By statehood in 1817, the coast held only 2.5 percent of Mississippi's population. The region remained a frontier, its culture shaped by Mediterranean influences and its ties to the wider world stronger than anywhere else in the state. The Gulf facilitated that — ships brought people, ideas, materials. In early 1906, Julia Dulion Lopez donated stained glass windows in memory of her late husband. The windows were built by Reis and Reis of Munich, Germany, and installed by Frederick Thornley of New York. The cathedral was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. It remains the seat of the Catholic Diocese of Biloxi, a working anchor on a coast that has always looked outward.