![St. Ann's Cathedral](https://historicmt.org/files/fullsize/c5ed96c1c58a02ccacd861131f3a15a5.jpg)
Shortly after Pope Pius X established the Diocese of Great Falls in 1904, Great Falls’ first bishop, Matthias Lenihan, hired Montana architect John Hackett Kent to design a cathedral equal to those in Europe. Kent, who helped design the Montana state capitol, looked to thirteenth-century England for inspiration. St. Ann’s shares all the features of the Gothic Revival style: an “exaggerated verticality” that makes the building itself look as if it were reaching toward heaven, a cruciform plan, pointed arches, window tracery, and a ribbed interior vault. According to the Great Falls Tribune, its red and cream sandstone was quarried locally, with “each block … cut for a particular place in the structure and … marked [to] … designate it for that one particular place.” Bitterroot Valley sculptor W. R. Gifford carved the two-ton exterior figure of Christ, which graces the top of the gable end arch. Construction of the cathedral, which seats five hundred people, cost approximately $100,000. Money for the project came from the four hundred parishioners living in Great Falls in 1906.
Images
![St. Ann's Cathedral](https://historicmt.org/files/fullsize/c5ed96c1c58a02ccacd861131f3a15a5.jpg)
![St. Ann's](https://historicmt.org/files/fullsize/4b16305d2df5680156d05d208e001010.jpg)
![St. Ann's Cathedral](https://historicmt.org/files/fullsize/15de52c9b344883e02c007849bcb4e65.jpg)
![St. Ann's Cathedral](https://historicmt.org/files/fullsize/a333393b987141fee456eb0b6f09e7de.jpg)
![St. Ann's Cathedral](https://historicmt.org/files/fullsize/4b5e94537cd9486759c3de938496adf3.jpg)
![St. Ann's Cathedral](https://historicmt.org/files/fullsize/0801d841770b7e40bc27b2feb0f75bb9.jpg)
![St. Ann's Cathedral](https://historicmt.org/files/fullsize/51b86742ae29adee6893e43c2d3d6136.jpg)