When the Sacred Heart Parish was established in 1912, it had a church, but it did not provide housing for a priest. When Father O’Reilly arrived to take care of the pastoral duties, he boarded initially at the Emerson Hotel. When that hotel was destroyed by fire, he purchased a small cottage.

In October 1922, Father Patrick J. McCarthy became O’Reilly’s successor. McCarthy spent his first three weeks sleeping in the organ loft of the church.  It turned out to be unseasonably cold, and as many an old time parishioner recalled  that church was cold and drafty. As a result McCarthy came down with pneumonia, and required hospitalization. Once discharged from the hospital efforts were underway to build a rectory next to the church. Within in a month’s time it was completed with lumber donated by Fruit Growers and Lassen Lumber and parishioners volunteered to construct it.

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