Chicago’s oldest Catholic parishes are not simply old buildings. Read them in order and you get a map of who arrived in this city and when — the Irish, then the Germans, the Poles, the Czechs, the Italians — each group building a church almost before they built anything else.
Several are still active parishes today, with Mass this Sunday. Here are the ones worth knowing.
Old St. Mary’s (1833) — the first
Chicago’s first Catholic parish predates the city’s own incorporation. In 1833, with roughly a hundred Catholics in what was then a town of a few hundred people, residents petitioned the Bishop of St. Louis for a priest. Father John Mary Irenaeus St. Cyr arrived and celebrated the first Mass on 5 May 1833, in a log building near the Sauganash Tavern.
The parish has moved several times since — including after the Great Fire destroyed the cathedral it had become — and has been in the care of the Paulist Fathers since 1903. Its present home on South Michigan Avenue was dedicated in 2002, which makes for an odd distinction: Chicago’s oldest parish worships in one of its newer Catholic buildings.
→ Old St. Mary’s Catholic Church
Old St. Patrick’s (1846) — the oldest building standing
Founded at Easter 1846 as the first English-speaking Catholic church in the city, Old St. Pat’s began in a modest wooden building at Randolph and Desplaines. The church that stands today was completed in 1856 from Cream City brick hauled down from Milwaukee.
Then came 1871. The Great Fire took most of the city, and Old St. Patrick’s was one of a small handful of buildings in its path left standing — which makes it, by most reckonings, the oldest public building in Chicago. The two octagonal spires, added in 1885 and deliberately unmatched, are said to represent the Eastern and Western Churches.
St. Michael in Old Town (1852) — the walls that held
St. Michael’s was founded for German and Luxembourgish immigrants, and its parish records note the dedication on Sunday, 17 October 1852, with 43 families. The land was given by the brewer Michael Diversey — the same Diversey the avenue is named for — and the first wooden church cost $750.
The brick church that replaced it in 1869 was, briefly, the tallest building in Chicago and in the United States, a distinction it held until the Board of Trade overtook it in 1885.
The Fire gutted it two years after it was finished. Only the walls were left — and they were in good enough condition that the parish built the new church straight back into them. Those walls are still there. It was rededicated almost exactly two years to the day after the Fire, and in 1876 five new bells were blessed.
St. Stanislaus Kostka (1867) — the parish that moved an expressway
The first Polish parish in Chicago, and for a time one of the largest Catholic parishes in the United States. Its scale is easiest to grasp from the road: when the Kennedy Expressway was laid out in the 1950s, the route bent around St. Stanislaus Kostka rather than through it. Drivers still take that curve without knowing why it is there.
→ St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish
St. Procopius (1875) — the Bohemian mother church
Organised in 1875 for the Czech community settling in what is now Pilsen, with the first Mass celebrated on Easter Sunday 1876 and a parish school opening the same year. Run by the Benedictines, it became the mother church of Chicago’s Bohemian parishes — the one from which the others grew.
Pilsen’s Catholic character has changed since; the neighbourhood is now largely Mexican, and St. Procopius with it. The parish’s annual Kermés is one of the best-attended parish festivals in the city.
Assumption (1881) — the first Italian parish
Founded in 1881 as the first church in Chicago commissioned specifically for Italian-speaking Catholics, with a remit unusual enough to be worth stating: it could enrol any Italian living anywhere in the archdiocese, not merely those within its boundaries. It has been staffed from the beginning by the Servites, an order founded in thirteenth-century Italy. The present building was finished in 1886.
St. John Cantius (1893) — built because St. Stan’s was full
Sometimes a parish exists for a simple reason. St. John Cantius was founded in 1893 to relieve overcrowding at St. Stanislaus Kostka, a mile away — which tells you something about how many Poles had arrived in Chicago in twenty-five years.
Today it is known for its liturgical music and its sung Latin Mass, and is one of the most architecturally striking churches in the city.
Visiting them
All seven are active parishes, not museums. Most have daily Mass, most have confession, and all of them would rather you came to a liturgy than a tour.
A few practical notes. Old St. Patrick’s and Assumption sit close to downtown and are straightforward on public transport. St. Michael’s, St. Stanislaus Kostka and St. John Cantius are within a few miles of each other on the Near North and Near West sides — three very different immigrant stories inside a short drive. St. Procopius is in Pilsen and worth pairing with the neighbourhood.
If you want to go, check the current schedule first — historic parishes often have unusual Mass times, and some of the most interesting liturgies are the ones that are not on Sunday morning. You can find Mass times for every Chicago parish and confession schedules on Hearth, or browse Catholic churches by city.
