John Paul II in the cathedral in 1987. It ran the private all-female Cathedral High School, in a building adjoined to the present-day cathedral itself. CHS merged with nearby all-male private Sacred Heart High School in 1987. St. Mary's Cathedral still has close ties to the resulting Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory, which uses the cathedral as its principal church for masses and other special events, such as graduation. Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo also uses the cathedral to hold graduation. Design The 1971 cathedral was designed by local architects John Michael Lee, Paul A. Ryan and Angus McSweeney, collaborating with internationally known architects Pier Luigi Nervi and Pietro Belluschi, then the Dean of the School of Architecture at MIT. Precast concrete work, which is the entire top portion of the building, was constructed by Terracon and the DiRegolo Family of Hayward, CA. Measuring square, the cathedral soars to high and is crowned with a golden cross. Its saddle roof is composed of eight segments of hyperbolic paraboloids, in such a fashion that the bottom horizontal cross section of the roof is a square and the top cross section is a cross. The design process was controversial. A preliminary design reminded one critic of "the effort of a camel and donkey to mate." After adding Belluschi and Nervi to the team, the situation improved, though the architects were then accused of plagiarizing the design of the St. Mary's Cathedral in Tokyo that was completed several years earlier. The modern design was not loved by San Francisco's Catholics who had previously worshipped in traditional churches. The church is commonly known as Our Lady of Maytag, because the roof (designed to look like a conquistador's helmet) resembles a washing machine agitator. The building was selected in 2007 by the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects for a list of San Francisco's top 25 buildings. In 2017, Architecture Digest named it one of the 10 most beautiful churches in the United States. Interior photos See also List of Catholic cathedrals in the United States List of cathedrals in the United States Roman Catholic Marian churches References External links Official Cathedral Site Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco Official Site Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption via the Archdiocese of San Francisco Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory Cathedrals of California Roman Catholic churches in San Francisco Concrete shell structures Modernist architecture