Founded in 1796, St. Augustine's was the fourth Roman Catholic church in the city and was paid for by a lottery that drew support from President George Washington. Completed by 1800 and occupied by Augustinian monks from Ireland, the church served a congregation of Irish immigrants, among them Commodore John Barry and publisher Matthew Carey. It was destroyed by arson in the Know-Nothing riots of 1844 and rebuilt by LeBrun, whose design recalled its predecessor in its brick walls and Pennsylvania blue marble detail. A cupola added by Edwin Forrest Durang in 1867 was in the late Federal mode of the destroyed church, suggesting a continuing institutional memory. The present cupola is a modern re-creation in cast aluminum of the original, which was blown down in a wind storm in 1992. Durang also built the adjoining parochial school (1870).