The Priests’ House
Since the early 1830s the centre of the Catholic Church as an institution in St. Catharines has been on the north side of Church Street between James and Lyman.
Initially the Catholics of the village of St. Catharines had been served by itinerant priests visiting from Niagara-on-the-Lake. The first Catholic church here was not built until 1831. It was of wood frame construction and was called St. John’s Church.
Following that the institutions of Catholic St. Catharines clustered around that same part of town.
St. John’s Church was burned to the ground by an arsonist in 1842, and was replaced by a sturdier stone church (harder for an arsonist to burn down!) named the Church of St. Catherine of Alexandria, finished in 1845.
To the west of it in 1874 rose St. Joseph’s Convent, home for the Sisters of St. Joseph, the religious order active since the late 1850s as teachers in St. Catharines’ separate schools.
An old frame house moved over to Lyman Street to make room for the convent was soon turned into St. Bridget’s School, which for almost two decades served as an elementary school. In 1892 it was replaced there on Lyman by the more modern brick, two storey, fourclassroom St. Catherine’s School.
In 1897-98 the church constructed on the south side of Church Street the Canadian Lyceum and Athletic Club, a community centre for parish gatherings.
In 1947, the McSloy house, home of a distinguished local Catholic family, was deeded to the Archdiocese of Toronto and for several years served as another parish centre for St. Catherine of Alexandria Church.
Our subject today is one other very important building which stood on the west side of Lyman Street between St. Catherine of Alexandria Church and St. Catherine’s School. It was the church rectory, the residence of the priests serving the parish.
The old photo accompanying this article shows what the rectory looked like late in its life. It was a large brick building, three storeys tall, with ornate Victorian details on its façade and a square tower on one corner – an architectural style probably best described as Edwardian.
Today, most of those church-related buildings have passed from the scene. The McSloy House/ Parish Centre was sold to the city and demolished in 1961. The convent was gutted by fire in 1971, and demolished in 1974. The Lyceum building was sold to the city in 1970 and demolished in 1974 to provide part of the plot on which the St. Catharines Public Library now stands. St. Catherine’s School on Lyman Street was closed and demolished in 1972, replaced by a parking lot. But the first building to vanish was the old rectory. In 1956 the resident priests moved across Church Street to live in the McSloy house while the old rectory was razed and replaced in 1957 by the modern rectory and office space that occupies the site today. Dennis Gannon is a member of the Historical Society of St. Catharines. He can be reached at