Rough sketch of the front St. Peter's Cathedral

Governor Robe rashly promised Adelaide's first Anglican Bishop, Augustus Short, land for a cathedral in the very centre of Colonel Light's carefully planned city. This was Victoria Square. Bishop Short pressed hard for the promise to become reality following Robe's return to England, but a court case instigated by the Bishop in 1855 found the land was not the Governor's to give away. The square remains an open park to this day. In the meantime the Roman Catholic community began building their long-planned cathedral adjacent to the square, on a large piece of land they had purchased in 1858.

Bishop Short then changed his plans completely, buying land at North Adelaide and commissioning plans from the famous English architect William Butterfield. Butterfield's conception was a cathedral built in polychrome brick. However it was not until 1869 that a foundation stone was laid and the first section of the cathedral was not ready for use until 1876. By this time Butterfield's plans had been substantially altered.

Rising young Adelaide architect, Edward Woods, designed a building using local sandstone and limestone. The truncated cathedral with its attractive lantern tower stood in this unfinished form for some decades. Finally Sir Thomas Elder and his brother-in-law Robert Barr Smith, both Presbyterians, gave the required sum of money for the cathedral to be completed with its distinctive towers, as it stands today.