ABOUT TOWN IN MOBILE, ALABAMA

On our trip to the South this past January, we spent a day in Mobile, the third largest city in Alabama. Mobile fit right in to my overarching impression of Alabama: quiet and slow. As a Californian, I kept looking around and wondering Where are all the people? Why is it so quiet? We were there on a Friday, a day that should be bustling with end-of-the-week, start-of-the-weekend activity, but it felt like a comparative ghost-town.

We parked right by what I thought at the time was the Masonic Lodge . . .

. . . because of the sphinx statues flanking the front door.

However, I've tried to find information about the building online and have been unsuccessful, so I'm not sure WHAT the building actually is.

We didn't ever get to downtown Mobile, but the skyline is dominated by the city's tallest building, which is also the tallest building in the state, the RSA (Retirement Systems of Alabama) Battle House Tower. Completed in September 2006, it is 745 feet tall.

Mobile is an arsty little town, with plenty of fun public art to enjoy, including this warrior outside the Centre for the Living Arts Museum just a block from the Cathedral-Basilica.

MOBILE, ALABAMA: CATHEDRAL-BASILICA OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

Mobile, Alabama, was designated the first capital of French Louisiana in 1702, and the first Catholic parish on the Gulf Coast was established here the following year. It was the first religious congregation of any denomination in Alabama and the Mississippi River Valley. Several different churches served as the home for the parish, but in 1829 Mobile was elevated to a diocese, and Bishop Michael Portier set out to build a monument that would represent that new status. The cornerstone was laid in 1835, and the cathedral was dedicated after fifteen years of construction in 1850.

The church is a Roman basilica design, with interior columns that divide the space and a wide central aisle. The exterior portico with its massive Doric columns was added in the 1870s, and the 103-foot-tall gold-topped towers were completed in 1884.

At one time the Archdiocese of Mobile included all of present-day Alabama and Florida, but today it includes just the Catholic parishes in the twenty-eight southern counties of Alabama. However, it was still important enough to the region that Pope John XXIII designated this building a minor basilica in 1962, and hence the "Cathedral-Basilica" designation.

The beautiful iron gates reveal the French influence of the region: