| St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church | |
| Location: | 1105 S. 7th St. Milwaukee, Wisconsin |
| Built: | 1893 |
| Architecture: | Gothic Revival |
| Refnum: | 74000109 |
| Added: | December 16, 1974 |
St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church is a historic church built in 1893 at the corner of 7th and Washington Streets in Walker's Point on the near South Side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin - still very intact. The building was designated a city landmark in 1973 and added to the National Register of Historic Places the following year for its artistic and architectural significance.[1]
St. Patrick's parish was organized in 1876, the first English-speaking parish on the South Side. Its initial members were mostly Irish immigrants and their children, to later be joined by Germans and Poles. In 1876 they built a combination church and school - the 2-story brick building at left in the photo.[2]
By the 1890s the parish was ready for a grander, larger building, and they hired James J. Egan of Chicago as architect. Eagan's design was built from 1893 to 1895 - a gable-roofed rectangular main block about 150 feet long along its east–west axis, about 70 feet wide, built of pressed brick and trimmed with Bedford limestone. A square tower stands at the northeast corner. The tower is flanked with corner buttresses and rises to a spire topped with a cross, 122 feet above the street. Centered beside the tower is the main entrance and above it is a large multi-pane window with six-circle shapes that echo a similar shape in the tower. Inside, the floor-plan is center-aisle, with the altar in an apse on the west end. A hammer-beam ceiling contains dormers with stained-glass clerestory windows imported from Austria. Sculptor Gaetano Trentanove carved the white marble sculpture of the Madonna and Child incorporated into the south altar.[3]
Since 2006, the parish has been administered jointly with the nearby parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the two share Jesuit clergy.