With an increasing need to build a new church to cater to Catholics who were part of the growing population in the vicinity of the harbour, the railway station and in Chinatown during the mid 1920s, French missionary Emile Mariette and local priest Stephen Lee began the building of the Church of St. Teresa, which opened in 1929. The church served a mixed congregation, comprising Chinese, Indians and Eurasians. As Catholic families living nearby relocated to other areas to make way for the development of Keppel Harbour in the 1960s and 1970s, the church expanded the boundaries of its parish to include Clementi, as well as Jurong.
