New Roman Catholic Cathedral, Brisbane.

Rare engraving of the Cathedral of St. Stephen on the corner of Elizabeth, Charlotte, Creek, and Edward Streets, Brisbane soon after it opened.

James Quinn, the first bishop of Brisbane, arrived in 1861 from Ireland, and soon began plans to build a large cathedral to accommodate a growing congregation. On 26 December 1863, the Feast of St Stephen, Quinn laid the foundation stone for a grand cathedral designed by Benjamin Backhouse, but this did not at first proceed beyond the foundations. R George Suter was then commissioned to design a smaller, simpler church partly on the foundations, and the current nave was built 1870–74, with the front gables and spires completed 1884. No further work was undertaken until James Duhig took up the archbishopric in 1917. With plans to build new larger Cathedral on a different site, he engaged architects Hennessy, Hennessy & Co to complete the cathedral with a crossing, transepts and sanctuary in a simpler design than intended, which was built in 1920–22.

From the original edition of the Town & Country Journal.