Our Rich History
At 600 North Paca Street, in the historic Seton Hill district of downtown Baltimore, there is a one and a third acre property that has been owned by the Sulpician Fathers for more than two centuries.
Surrounded by a public park, it contains two National Historic Landmarks. The first of these is St. Mary’s Chapel, dedicated in honor of the Presentation of Mary in the Temple. Begun in 1806, it was the first Neo-Gothic church in the United States. For more than a century and a half, it served as the chapel of the original St. Mary’s Seminary and, for a time, as the local parish for the residents of Baltimore’s former French Quarter.
The second National Historic Landmark on the site is the Mother Seton House. Built in the Federal Style so popular in the early 19th century, this building served as the residence and school of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in 1808 and 1809.
French-born architect Maximilian Godefroy (1765-c.1840) designed St. Mary’s Chapel and probably also the Mother Seton House. Friend of the Father of American Architecture Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Godefroy later designed such notable structures as the Battle Monument in downtown Baltimore and the State Capitol in Richmond.
For more than two centuries, St. Mary’s Spiritual Center & Historic Site on Paca Street has been a place of spiritual transformation, Catholic education and personal inspiration.
- In 1791 St. Mary’s Seminary & University was founded on this site by the Sulpician Fathers, a community of diocesan priests founded by Father Jean-Jacques Olier in Paris in 1641. St. Mary’s was the first Catholic seminary in the United States and the first institution of higher learning in Maryland to receive a state charter.
- In 1799 St. Mary’s College was founded on this site. It was the first Catholic college in Maryland and one of the first in the nation. The College was closed in 1852, making way for the opening of Loyola College of Maryland (1853).
- In 1808 Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first person born in the U.S. to be canonized, established on this site her first Catholic school for girls. It led her to promote free education for poor girls and was a precursor of the parochial school system in this country.
- In the early 19th century this site inspired the foundation of two new communities in the Church: the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph’s, the first community of women to be founded in the United States; and the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first religious community of African-American women in this country. The foundress of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary also received her early spiritual formation on this site.
- From the end of the 18th century until the middle of the 19th, priests and bishops went out from here as pioneers of the faith who evangelized the mission territories to the west and founded new dioceses in today’s Midwest and South.
- Later in the 19th century and in the early 20th, thousands of priests were trained here. Some of them became prominent churchmen; others established new and important Catholic organizations such as the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America (Maryknoll), the Knights of Columbus, and the Glenmary Home Missioners.
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