St. Frances Cabrini Church (New Orleans)

St. Frances Cabrini Church was a Roman Catholic church in New Orleans, Louisiana; the heart of the parish of the same name in the Archdiocese of New Orleans. The parish was an area bounded by Lake Pontchartrain, mid-city,and two major canals. The parish was carved from St. Raphael Parish in 1953 and the original church was but a small quonset hut built by the men in the parish. They later added an extension wing to it, to make the quonset hut L-shaped to accommodate the growing neighborhood and population in the parish. The quonset hut was accidentally burned to the ground one early morning in 1961.

The parish had also built a parochial grammar school for grades kindegarten through eighth grade on the same campus grounds as the church quonset hut and rectory house. Years later, a second building on the campus grounds was built, called the towers, which provided for additional classroom facilities for the grammar school.

Years later with more growth the parish and the archdiocese contributed to building a parochial high school across the street from the campus. It was an all-girls academy called St. Joseph Academy for grades 9 through 12.

Plans for a new church were already underway when the quonset hut had burned down. The gymnasium of St. Joseph Academy was temporarily used to conduct Masses and other church services until the new church was built. In 1963, the new church structure was completed; it was a masterpiece in architectural design and modernity. The modern stained glass and sweeping arcs of the white roof curved up to the tallest white steeple and steel cross ever seen in this part of the residential lakefront section of New Orleans. The altar of the church was an enormous and masterful single carving in one piece of marble, commissioned in Italy. The altar crucifix was similarly imported. It was a three-dimensional wooden image of the resurrected Christ that was suspended by steel cables that appeared nearly invisible to the naked eye. This very large statue of the risen Christ with flowing robe ascending above the altar provided a unique and reverential atmosphere from all other churches in the city of New Orleans. The pews were made of blanched wood, and the floors a white terrazzo which all further lightened the atmosphere to an almost ethereal quality within the church, especially when reflecting sunlight through the stained glass around the roof's modern arcs. The bottom of the church's great steeple dove past the roof down into the church as four curved pillars and represented structural yet graceful markings bounding the altar area.

...
Wikipedia