Here, at the One Mile Tavern, in 1791, the Fathers of St. Sulpice (Paris, France) founded St. Mary's, the first Roman Catholic Seminary in the United States. Maryland was then a center of Catholic activity, with Baltimore having been selected at the nation's first see (November 6, 1789), embracing all the territory east of the Mississippi and from the Canadian border to the Floridas, which then belonged to Spain. In this vast territory there were not more than thirty priests and more than 30,000 Catholics.
The present Chapel, a national landmark, was designed by Maximilian Godefroy and dedicated on June 16, 1808 by Archbishop John Carroll. Generations of priests were formed here. St. Elizabeth Ann Seton too her first vows in the Lower Chapel (March 25, 1809) and the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first congregation of black Sisters in the world, regard it as the site of their foundation (1829).
The Seminary building (depicted below) was designed by E. F. Baldwin a Baltimore architect. Constructed in various stations from 1876 to 1894, the building was razed in 1975 and the property was sold to the City of Baltimore for St. Mary's Park.
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