Cathedral of the Sacred Heart (Richmond, Virginia)
church in Richmond, Virginia, United States
The Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Richmond, Virginia, is a Catholic cathedral that is the seat of the Diocese of Richmond. The property is located along North Laurel Street at 823 Cathedral Place, facing Monroe Park, one block north of Main Street. Construction of the cathedral was begun in 1903, financed by donations of Thomas Fortune Ryan and his wife; it was the only cathedral at that time known to be constructed by the exclusive patronage of a single family.
The cathedral was completed in 1905 and consecrated on November 29, 1906. The cathedral is a Virginia Historic Landmark and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Cathedral of the Sacred Heart hosts the Catholic campus ministry for Virginia Commonwealth University.
Background
The first cathedral for the Diocese of Richmond was St. Peter's Cathedral, constructed in 1834. By the 1860s, Bishop John McGill realized that it was too small for the growing Catholic population in Richmond. He found a lot in the city for the new cathedral in 1867, but only had funds to purchase a small part of it.
The public source identifies “Cathedral of the Sacred Heart (Richmond, Virginia)” as church in Richmond, Virginia, United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Cathedral, Sacred and Heart.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5052468. Authority coordinates are 37.547, -77.452. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1903, 1905, 1906 and 1834.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cathedral of the Sacred Heart (Richmond, Virginia)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.