St Mary's Catholic Church, South Brisbane

St Mary's Catholic Church is a heritage-listed Roman Catholic church at 20 Merivale Street (corner of Peel Street), South Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Simkin & Ibler and built from 1892 to 1929. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 3 December 2004.HistorySt Mary's Catholic Church, South Brisbane, is a late nineteenth century rendered brick church designed by Brisbane architects, Simkin and Ibler and constructed by Woollam and Norman in 1892-1893. At the time of its opening on 2 July 1893 construction of the church was not finalised. The proposed tower, transepts and chancel were never built and it was not until 1929 a permanent sanctuary was added to the eastern end of the church to the design of architects Cavanagh and Cavanagh. The former Presbytery (now parish house), built at about the same time as the church, was completed by February 1893.St Mary's was the second Catholic Church to be built in South Brisbane and was built adjacent to the first church, a small wooden chapel erected in 1865. The chapel was expanded in 1868 when two aisles were added almost doubling its size. Sparsely inhabited in 1861, the population was only 1080, South Brisbane was a small but growing residential suburb. By 1871 the number of inhabitants had increased to 4222.In the 1880s, Brisbane experienced an economic and building boom and South Brisbane's population trebled, reaching 22,849 in 1891. The connection of the rail network and the development of commercial, industrial and dockside activities on the southern banks of the river further contributed to South Brisbane's growth. The Municipality of South Brisbane was declared in 1888. As residential suburbs expanded the population of the old municipality of Brisbane decreased, by more than 2000 between 1886 and 1891.