Site of St. Genevieve Catholic Church
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No other building has come to represent the history of Las Cruces and the loss of that history more than St. Genevieve Catholic Church. The St. Genevieve Catholic Church was the town's first real landmark, a focal point in the skyline of Las Cruces for a century. The first St. Genevieve church was a simple adobe building built in 1859. Work on the second church finished in December 1887 under the direction of Mother Superior Praxedes and Father Pierre Lassaigne. With its distinctive, 45-foot high metal domed towers, visible from miles away, the brick French-style cathedral became the city's first real landmark building, and its plaza hosted numerous religious and community festivals, concerts, and events. The metal domes proved too heavy for the foundation and were removed in 1926. St. Genevieve church then sported a Pueblo Revival Style stucco in the late 1930s, however, by the 1950s, deep cracks had developed in the foundation and walls. With Urban Renewal efforts underway in the late 1960s, the Catholic Diocese of El Paso insisted it could not afford to fix the church, and it sold the lot and building to a local bank. The last Mass was held Sept. 24, 1967, and the church building was torn down the next month.
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