No attempt was made here, as there was with Market Square, to alter the city grid and create a ceremonial space for the new church. It was constructed over a three-year period in Gothic Revival that was sophisticated, not only for Brownsville but also for Texas. Kéralum, an architect-cabinetmaker from Brittany who had joined the Oblate Order, was called to Brownsville after designing the church in Roma (
SM8). He configured the building into a Latin cross plan with an eighty-eight-foot-tall tower containing the bells of a steamboat. Originally stuccoed and scored to emulate stone, its buttressed exterior brick walls are topped by a parapet of continuous wheel patterns with open work. In the grounds, the marble, altar-like Celaya family vault contains the remains of Brownsville's most prominent Spanish immigrant family. The interior includes original wooden pews, stained glass windows, and a rib-vaulted ceiling covered with blue plaster from which hang original chandeliers.