The first site for St. Philip's was in downtown Atlanta, across from the State Capitol on the corner of what is now Washington Street and Martin Luther King Drive. By 1875 the small church had grown to be the largest Episcopal church in Georgia, and in 1907 St. Philip's was named the cathedral of the Diocese of Atlanta, which was formed that same year. In 1928 the cathedral selected Raimundo de Ovies as its new dean and began work on selecting a site for construction of a new cathedral.
