A return after Hurricane Ida: St. Augustine in Faubourg Tremé marks 185 years — New Orleans

For nearly five years the congregation of St. Augustine has worshipped in its parish hall, a room the parishioners nicknamed “the basilica”. Hurricane Ida tore through the roof of the church itself in 2021, and the building at 1210 Governor Nicholls Street, in the Faubourg Tremé, has been closed ever since. On Saturday 18 October 2026 the doors open again, with a mass at 10am that is also the parish’s 185th anniversary — a service the parish is calling the Celebration of Return. Mayor Helena Moreno is expected among the guests.

The church was established in 1841 and dedicated on 9 October 1842, on land that had belonged to Claude Tremé’s plantation and was acquired with the help of the Ursuline Sisters. It was designed by J.N.B. de Pouilly, the French architect who also worked on the enlargement of St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter. What makes it unlike any other church of the antebellum South is what the free people of colour who founded it did with its pews. In the 1840s a church paid its bills by selling or renting private pews; the free Black parishioners of St. Augustine bought roughly half of the centre pews and every single pew in the side aisles, and reserved them for enslaved people, so that the enslaved and the free would sit through the same mass side by side.

“We’ve been out of our church for a long time now and the fact that we are going back, it is a very big deal,” Willie Glaze, who directs religious education at the parish, told the Louisiana Weekly. “The past few years we have been attending in our parish hall, nicknamed ‘the basilica’, which was more intimate, whereas St. Augustine is huge. When you stand up front at the pulpit and see all these pews; it’s a massive space.”

The restoration is in its final stages rather than finished: the roof and the church’s 180-year-old iron cross were both damaged in the storm, and the parish is opening the building while work continues.

Practical details

• When: Saturday 18 October 2026, 10am
• Where: St. Augustine Catholic Church, 1210 Governor Nicholls Street, New Orleans, Louisiana 70116
• What: mass for the 185th anniversary and the Celebration of Return, the first service in the church since Hurricane Ida
• Who: the parish of St. Augustine, Faubourg Tremé — pastor Rev. Emmanuel Mulenga, O.M.I.
• Booking: none; the parish expects a full sanctuary

Cultural Heritage Online lists this event for readers in New Orleans. Details of the celebration were reported by the Louisiana Weekly on 13 October 2026; the parish’s own site confirms a formal homecoming this autumn.