german parish churches of himpler and druiding hampton 1997

German Gothic in the Midwest: The Parish Churches of Franz Georg Himpler and AdolphusDruidingAuthor(s): Roy A. Hampton, IIIReviewed work(s):Source: U.S. Catholic Historian, Vol. 15, No. 1, Sacred Places — Liturgical Spaces: Explorationsof Religious Architecture (Winter, 1997), pp. 51-74Published by: Catholic University of America PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25154572 .Accessed: 28/12/2011 12:41

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German Gothic in the Midwest: The Parish Churches of Franz Georg Himpler and

Adolphus Druiding

Roy A. Hampton III

In the late nineteenth century, language, culture, and religion separated German Catholics from the established mainstream of Anglo-Saxon Protestant society in America. Within the Catholic Church in America,

Germans were again separated by language and culture from the Irish who

dominated the hierarchy. German Catholics who emigrated from areas where

anti-Catholicism and Protestantism were on the ascendency arrived in America

with a sense of mistrust towards government and secular society. Nativism and

anti-Catholicism, such as the Know-Nothing movement, greatly increased this

sense of mistrust and separatism. Germans therefore huddled together in strong ethnic communities and neighborhoods where they could preserve their own

customs and language. German ethnic churches were often major focal points of these communities, with large numbers of German Catholic parishes exist

ing in cities like Chicago, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, and Cleveland.

Hence, parish churches are some of the best architectural reminders of the

German Catholic presence in nineteenth century America. The two architects

who stand out as designers of distinguished German Catholic parish churches

in the Midwest, are Franz Georg Himpler, (1833-1916), and Adolphus

Druiding (1839-1899), both German natives. Put together, the work of these

two independent architects includes a large portion of the outstanding German

Catholic church architecture between 1865 and 1900. While the influence of

some German-American architects was limited to a single city or state, both

Druiding and Himpler designed churches in several cities and towns. Many of

their buildings can be considered among the finest examples of German

Catholic church architecture in the United States.

A distinctively German-Catholic church architecture flourished in America

between 1865 and 1910, with buildings based on the medieval Gothic and

Romanesque styles. In general, German immigrants followed American archi

tectural fashions, often building in the architectural styles most popular at the

57

52 US. Catholic Historian

time. However, Greek Revival, Italianate, and other styles popular in America

before 1865 were not well suited for German ethnic expression. There was

nothing particularly German about a church designed to look like a Greek tem

ple, or a church with details borrowed from an Italian villa. The primacy of

these styles among pre-Civil War American builders and designers made it dif

ficult for German Catholics to commission buildings that reflected their ethnic

origins. In contrast, most major Western European ethnic groups had their own dis

tinct version of Gothic architecture. Anyone with a good architectural eye could distinguish between a church based on English Gothic models and one

based on German, French, or Italian Gothic precedent. The nineteenth-century Gothic Revival allowed German Catholics to develop their own unique form of

church architecture which flourished during this period. Similarly, the

medieval Romanesque style also had distinct German variations, and enjoyed

high popularity among German Catholics in this period. One may ask why this emergence of distinct German Catholic architecture

did not occur earlier. After all, there were plenty of German immigrants pre sent in the United States in the 1840s and 50s, and the Gothic Revival style became popular for church building in the United States as early as the 1840s.

It has been theorized that when Germans first arrived in the United States they were interested in building structures that fit in well with their American com

munities. To illustrate their adaptability, they conformed to American architec

tural norms as a sign of their patriotism and loyalty to the United States. Later

in the century, when German-Americans began to sense that they were losing their cultural distinctiveness, they began building churches that emphasized their individuality.

For some immigrants, ethnic architectural expressions became more impor tant as German language and customs were increasingly threatened by the

encroachment of American culture. And yet, we must ask why a people so

concerned with holding on to their culture and language would seek to build

large public buildings that went against that cultural identity, and conformed to

the standards of their adopted country. While some early German parishes may have desired to conform to American architectural tastes, we know of many

examples of early German Catholic congregations which wanted to build a

church that expressed their ethnicity. However, their efforts to express identity

through architecture were often frustrated.

Prior to the Civil War, many German Catholic churches were designed by local Protestant architects or builders, and these churches often reflected the

English architectural bias of the designers. The classic example of this is St.

Alphonsus Church in Baltimore (1842-46). This German-speaking immigrant

congregation desired a German Gothic parish church, but the design for their

building was drawn up by a Protestant architect who did not understand the

German Gothic style. The resulting church had some German characteristics,

German Gothic in the Midwest 53

but was very English in style and form.1 Many German congregations of the

1840s and 1850s, Protestant and Catholic, must have desired a German Gothic

church, but found it necessary to depend on local architects who were biased

in the tradition of English Gothic. German architects were present in the United States before 1865, but they

were also often concentrated in eastern cities, isolated from the frontier towns

where many German immigrants were settling. Also, many of these architects

were not trained extensively in the design of churches, and few appear to have

had much knowledge of German Gothic design. In fact, during the 1840s and

1850s scholars in Germany were still studying and cataloging the monuments

of German medieval architecture. Most architectural academies in Germany were biased towards Classical forms of architecture, and it was not until the

mid-1850s, that they began teaching Gothic-design principles. Prior to the

mid-1850s, new Gothic churches in Germany were often flimsy looking and

unconvincing because architects lacked good training in Gothic design.2 If

Germany's prominent architects were hard pressed to produce quality German

Gothic designs, the situation was surely worse with German-immigrant archi

tects in the United States. Obtaining a quality German Gothic design for a

parish church was extremely difficult for most midwestern congregations in

the pre-Civil War years.

However, by the mid-1850s study of medieval architecture in Germany had

progressed, and designers gained the knowledge needed to design authentic

looking German Gothic churches. In the 1860s a number of these German

architects emigrated to the United States, and began making a significant

impact on midwestern church architecture. Factors for immigration were

numerous. The post-Civil War American building boom presented economic

opportunities for graduates of the German architecture schools. In addition, Prussia was exerting increasing control over other German states in the late

1860s, which would eventually lead to the unification of Germany under

1. My information on the construction of St. Alphonsus is taken from Phoebe Stanton's An Episode in

Taste: The American Gothic Revival and Church Architecture 1841-1859, (Baltimore; John Hopkins Press,

1968), 225-235. St. Alphonsus was designed by Robert Cary Long Jr., an American trained architect

deeply influenced by A.W.N Pugin, the leading figure in the revival of Gothic architecture in England. The

building does have some German characteristics such as a hallchurch plan, but in proportion and detail it is

decidedly English Gothic. Long even described it as a church in the English "Perpendicular Gothic" Style. The current Germanic interior of the church is not due to the influence of the architect, but to the congrega tion's efforts to decorate it with elaborate German Gothic woodwork and furniture. The combination of

German clients and American architects in the era before and during the Civil War produced a number of

churches that were architecturally a mixture of German and English Gothic styles. 2. An excellent overview of the Gothic Revival in Germany written in English is Michael Lewis' The

Politics of the German Gothic Revival: August Reichensperger (Boston: MIT Press, 1993). The major German architectural academies were, for the most part, reluctant to embrace the revival of Gothic design.

While the Gothic Revival in England was flourishing as early as the 1830s and 1840s, it was not until the

1850s and 60s that Germany's Gothic movement began to pick up steam.


Berlin's control in 1871. Soon to follow was a full scale persecution of

Catholics in Bismarck's Germany. Unification also placed construction of

major public buildings under the regulatory control of the Berlin establish

ment, which generally did not favor Gothic construction. Anticipating the diffi

culties ahead, many Catholic architects may have decided to leave Germany before unification took place. Whatever the reasons, a significant number of

German Catholic church architects settled in major American cities around

1865. The expanding railroad network allowed these architects to quickly ship church plans and specifications to cities and towns across the United States.

German congregations patronized these architects because they felt more

comfortable with designers who spoke their language and practiced their reli

gion, but also because German architects had a stronger sense of German style than Irish, English or American-born designers. While many English-speaking architects had studied the monuments of German and French Gothic architec

ture, their sense of composition, proportion, scale, and aesthetics was still gen

erally steeped in British sensibilities. The 1860s brought to America a genera tion of German born and trained architects who had a stronger sense of what

made Germany's Gothic architecture unique and distinctive.

America's German Catholic church architects came from varying back

grounds, and each one had an individual sense of Gothic design. Most were

specialists in church architecture, although almost all designed other types of

structures, often public buildings and schools. Only a few were priests or

members of religious orders. Many stories exist of German pastors educated in

architecture who designed their own parish churches, but in most cases these

tales are legends or exaggerations. However, it should be noted that some

German-American religious brothers were architects and designed churches

and monasteries in the United State. However, these architect-brothers were

generally under control of their respective religious orders, and did not have

the power to advertise or hire additional staff as did lay architects. As a result

their productivity was somewhat limited when compared to many secular

architects who designed churches.3

As lay architects, Himpler and Druiding were free to design churches when

ever and wherever they pleased, and for a variety of clients. This freedom led

Druiding and Himpler to develop sharply different design philosophies, even

3. At least one major German immigrant church architect belonged to a religious order. Brother Adrian

Wewer (Weber) was a native of Westphalia and received training as a carpenter in Germany. He arrived in

the U.S. in 1862 as a Franciscan brother, and was sent to St. Louis. He designed numerous monasteries and

parish churches for the Franciscans, and occasionally for other groups. Most of his work is clustered in the

Midwest, but he also worked in California. Wewer spent his entire adult life traveling across the United

States designing and building for the Franciscans, and died in California. My information on Wewer is

largely drawn from a 1995 lecture by Dr. James Harmon of Northeast Missouri State University. Harmon

is still researching the career of this unique Franciscan architect.


though they shared nearly identical educational and religious backgrounds, and

were contemporaries. Himpler was conscientious and scholarly in the use of

historic architectural styles, especially the Gothic Revival. His churches were

usually built out of very fine materials and showed a sophisticated understand

ing of Gothic detail and proportion. Because of the expense and complexity of

his exquisite designs, Himpler often worked for major urban parishes with a

significant pool of money to spend on building. His largest parish churches

were like urban cathedrals that served as the visual and spiritual focal points of

German communities in Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Detroit. However, because

of the quality and expense of his designs, parts of many Himpler churches

were left uncompleted or were finished years later by other architects. Despite these problems, Himpler's German parish churches of the Midwest form the

finest body of ecclesiastical German Gothic produced by a single American

architect.

Druiding on the other hand was an aggressive businessman and self promot er, willing to design a church of any size to fit any budget, however large or

small. He was not opposed to using inexpensive materials to give a poor parish the elaborate church it wanted at a price it could afford. He was also a ruthless

experimenter when it came to architectural style. While most of his ecclesiasti

cal designs for German Catholics were based on appropriate precedents from

German or French Gothic, Druiding combined these elements together in a

very free, unscholarly way that often produced bizarre and unconventional

results. While Druiding's work is not as elegant and refined as Himpler's, his

sensitivity to economic factors and the striking, unconventional appearance of

many of his churches made him the most popular architect among German

Catholic congregations in the Midwest, both rich and poor. Druiding designed over one hundred churches, eight convents and monasteries, two cathedrals, and built a major parish church in almost every midwestern city. A catalog

produced fourteen years before the end of Druiding's career boasted that the

architect's total of churches, schools, convents and monasteries added up to

over four hundred.4 Druiding was also a successful designer of houses and

public buildings in his thirty-five year career, but his specialty always remained

religious architecture.

Himpler, the older of the two architects, was born near Trier, Germany in

1833. He studied at the Royal Academy of Architecture in Berlin during 1854

58, and followed with travel across Europe. It was during these travels that he

probably attained his superb knowledge of Gothic architecture. He reportedly worked in Europe as a church architect and designed a church and chapel at

4. Druiding, Church Architecture: With Suggestions Relative to the Construction of Churches Chicago, 1886. This work is a richly illustrated promotional catalog for Druiding's ecclesiastical designs. I obtained it through the generosity of Rev. Thomas Fait of Union Grove, Wisconsin.

56 U.S. Catholic Historian

**^^bIg *,%* __u__B__e^ '* *VH-?* '~~t ' ^v ** '"

Fig. 1: Franz Georg Himpler, St. Francis

De Sales Church, Cincinnati, 1878, exteri

or rendering (Courtesy: St. Francis De

Sales Parish).

Vaudrevange in Lorraine. In

1867, Himpler came to the

United States, and settled in

Atchison, Kansas, designing St.

Benedict's Abbey in that town.

He then relocated to Hoboken, New Jersey, where he resided

while practicing architecture

out of New York. Among his

works on the east coast are The

Academy of the Sacred Heart

and Church of Our Lady of Grace in Hoboken, New Jersey, and the now demolished

Romanesque Revival St.

Alphonsus Church in New York City.

Himpler was a favored

architect among midwestern

German Catholics who were

searching for an architect who

could create a powerful symbol of German presence in the

urban community. Because of

his superb knowledge of the

Gothic architectural monu

ments of the German Rhineland and nearby provinces of France, Himpler's churches have an unmistakably German sense of style and proportion. The

exterior effect of Himpler's German parish churches is generally monumental,

inspiring and striking. Most of the buildings were based on a full cross-shaped

(cruciform) plan, with strong vertical lines, and one or more spires of consider

able height. These churches were clearly intended to function as medieval

cathedrals; they were social and visual focal points of their towns or neighbor hoods. Many of Himpler's churches rank as the finest examples of German

Gothic architecture in the city or state where they are located.

Himpler's earliest German-American parish church was probably St.

Joseph's Church in Detroit, built in 1870. Its exterior design is forceful and

vertical, with numerous gables and vertical windows. The proportions of the

interior reflect the powerful verticality of the exterior. The church's tall interior

aisles and slender columns recall the German hallchurches of the middle ages, which were planned to be open and spacious, in contrast to the long, narrow

tunnel-like church interiors of many French and English Gothic cathedrals.


Fig. 2: Himpler, SS. Peter and Paul, St. Louis, MO, 1875, exterior (Photo by Neal Nathanson).

This sense of expansive openness is almost unique to Germany in the world of

Gothic architecture. St. Joseph's interior furnishings and stained glass also

enhance its image as a sanctuary of German Catholic faith and culture.

While St. Joseph's in Detroit is a good example of Himpler's skill in Gothic

design, the architect's German Gothic masterpiece in America is undoubtedly Saints Peter and Paul Church in St. Louis, Missouri (1873-75). One of the

principal cities of German America, St. Louis was a center of German culture

and thought through most of the nineteenth century. As the premier parish of

St. Louis' German Catholic community, SS. Peter and Paul clearly deserved

the finest and most majestic of church buildings. The design provided by

Himpler remains as one of the finest examples of German Gothic in America.

The exterior of SS. Peter and Paul is a compelling statement of German

Gothic verticality (Fig 2). The massive stone church towers over the landscape of the south side of St. Louis with its sharply vertical windows, buttresses and

pinnacles. In SS. Peter and Paul, Himpler was able to build a magnificent

building in the fullness of scale and majesty that he wanted. However, while

the interior was completed much as he intended, the exterior of the church is

58 U. S. Catholic Historian

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' s ____________fl__w M_BP E__________P^h_^ *________________________ J^___

H__F '

? ___^_____H____f IfflL ^_________Bi~^__i1________?__K____________a___I

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Fig. 3: Himpler, SS. Peter and Paul, interior (Photo by Neal Nathanson).

unfortunately a different story. The existing church has a single tower and spire on the south side of the main facade, but clearly Himpler intended for another

shorter tower to be built on the facade's north side. Also, the existing tower

and spire were added in 1889-90, and may or may not reflect Himpler's origi nal drawings. Himpler's church designs were so expensive that towers and

spires were usually not executed in the original building campaign. They were

generally added 10 to 20 years after the initial completion of a building, and if

Himpler's design called for two asymmetrical towers on the church front, the

shorter tower was usually never built. Consulting architects were often called

in to supervise the completion of towers, and they often modified Himpler's

plans or drew up their own tower designs. The finest aspect of the design of SS. Peter and Paul is its interior (Fig. 3).

This interior is based on the idea of creating the openness of German

hallchurches while preserving the sense of verticality and the sense of a long center aisle seen in many French and some German cathedrals. The aisles of

the church are supported on thin columns that almost reach the ceiling, giving the interior a sense of spacious hall church openness. However, the church's


side aisles are not quite as tall as the middle aisle, and not as wide. This gives the center aisle a sense of visual dominance akin to the verticality of

Germany's Cologne Cathedral. At the top of the middle aisle is a small section

of wall near the ceiling, commonly known as a clerestory. In most cathedrals

this section of wall has windows that open directly to the outside and let light

into the center of the church directly. It is an unusual feature of Himpler's

parish churches (and also some of Druiding's) that the "clerestory" is covered

on the outside by the roofs of the side aisles. Light comes into the clerestory windows indirectly through dormers cut into these roofs. Overall, Himpler combines in this interior two of the most important concepts of German

Gothic. He captures the feeling of the open hall church, while retaining the

sense of Cologne Cathedral's clerestory, and its vertical emphasis. A third important concept in German Gothic design is embodied by the

sanctuary space of SS. Peter and Paul. The area of the church just in front of

the sanctuary extends out on each side into spaces known as transepts. At the

east end of the church is a five-sided apse which contains the main altar. Then

to each side of the main apse are two smaller apses, with side altars that are

diagonally placed. Thus, when approaching the altar of SS. Peter and Paul, one

sees the space of the church expanding out in five directions: ahead into the

sanctuary, to the right and left into the transepts, and diagonally into the small

er apses containing the side altars. The effect is almost like that of being in a

round or octagonal church of Baroque or Byzantine design, with space con

stantly expanding and receding all around. Clearly this dynamic spatiality emanates from one of the most unusual monuments of German Gothic archi

tecture, the Liebfrauenkirche in Trier (Himpler's birthplace), a building in

which radiating chapels were added to a typical basilican Gothic church plan to create a complex, centrally focused space similar to Byzantine churches

with their multiple side domes. The Liebfrauenkirche has always been consid

ered one of most unique and original monuments of the German Gothic, and

was used as a source by ninteenth-century architects practicing in Germany.

Himpler thus provides a distinctive, vertical, hallchurch-like space for the

congregation, and a breathtakingly open setting for the clergy and altar.

Himpler's design is based through and through on close analysis of French and

German Gothic. However, it is not a dry copy of medieval buildings, but is

instead a dynamic, creative fusion of many diverse but related elements of

German architectural form. Today, many of the church's interior furnishings have been removed, but the building's interior shell has been left intact and still

affords the visitor a glimpse into Himpler's mastery of Gothic form and space.

Considering the architect's achievement at SS. Peter and Paul, it is unfortunate

that Himpler was never given the opportunity to design a large scale cathedral

in the United States. Such a building would surely be counted among the finest

monuments of the Gothic Revival in America.

60 U S. Catholic Historian

A third major midwestern German parish church by Himpler is St. Francis

De Sales in Cincinnati, built in 1878. A church of considerable scale, St.

Francis contains many of the fine characteristics seen at SS. Peter and Paul, but

with a more conventional plan than the St. Louis church. The layout once

again creates an open, hallchurch-like space with a dormer-lit clerestory and a

cruciform plan. Most striking is the facade of the church, with its prominent

triple portals and a central rose window, in the French tradition of Chartres and

Amiens Cathedrals. The entire exterior surface is composed of stone: walls in

limestone block, trim in yellow sandstone. The details are executed with

Himpler's usual exquisite understanding of Gothic form. The facade was to

have two towers of 230 and 130 feet respectively (Fig. 1), an asymmetrical

arrangement reminiscent of the varied spires of Chartres.5 The taller of the two

towers was built in 1896-1897, but was given a clock face that did not appear in Himpler's original rendering. The slender octagonal spire does gracefully

rise from the tower as Himpler had planned. As at SS. Peter and Paul, the sec

ond tower of St. Francis De Sales was never built, and its base is now capped off with a pyramidal roof. Nevertheless, the presence of the other completed tower gives the facade of St. Francis De Sales a powerful, vertical look. The

church stands today as Cincinnati's finest example of German Gothic, and one

of the major landmarks of the city's east side.

In addition to Himpler's triad of monumental parish churches in Cincinnati, St. Louis and Detroit, he also designed a number of smaller churches in the

Midwest for German congregations. These include St. Mary's Church in

Grand Rapids, Michigan (1873), and also St. Mary's in Sandusky, Ohio (1873

80). Both churches have a plan and format very similar to Himpler's larger

churches, and both have a massive front center tower similar to St. Joseph, Detroit. Although Himpler seems to have been more comfortable designing in

a larger scale, both of these small churches show the same concern for quality of materials and detail seen at the major churches.

While other architects of German descent built numerous churches in the

Midwest during the 1880s and 90s, Himpler seems to have designed most of

his major German Catholic works in the Midwest prior to 1880. Himpler may have concentrated on the east coast in his late career, or he may have drifted

away from church architecture into other projects. He built a school, court

house and suspension bridge in New Jersey, and also created and patented a

design for girders which prevented the cracking of walls and ceilings. Himpler died in 1916, and today is better known among architectural historians than

other German Catholic architects of his time, possibly because he worked on

the east coast. However, Himpler has still been denied the recognition he

5. Himpler's description of the design is quoted in St. Francis De Sales Church Centennial (Cincinnati,

1950).


deserves as the most competent immigrant architect to work in the German

Gothic idiom. He was clearly the best of the medievalists that came to America

from the German architectural academies of the nineteenth century.

The story of Adolphus Druiding is in some ways almost identical to

Himpler's. Druiding was born in 1839 in Hannover, and it appears that he stud

ied architecture at the Royal Academies of both Berlin and Munich before

arriving in the United States around 1865-1866, and settled in St. Louis, the

heart of America's German-American community. Almost immediately, he

began a successful career in church design, and did not find it necessary or

desirable to remove to the east coast, as Himpler did. This is probably attribut

able to Druiding's more liberal work preferences. As mentioned earlier,

Himpler's designs for large, expensive churches were out of reach for many

poorer congregations of the 1870s, especially the many new parishes estab

lished at the end of the Civil War. Druiding, in contrast, was willing to design churches that were more modest in terms of materials and design. He found St.

Louis an excellent base for operations, and the Midwest a very fertile ground for his practice.6

There is evidence that Druiding was called on to design a number of small

churches in St. Louis almost immediately on arrival, but these have been

demolished or remain unidentified. The first recorded Druiding church design in America was in 1867 for St. Joseph's Parish in Jasper, a town that was a

magnet for German settlement in southern Indiana. However, the congregation did not build the brick church Druiding represented in his drawings, but used

sandstone from a quarry donated to the parish. The builders rescaled parts of

the building, and the tower was left unbuilt when the church was finished in

1881. When the tower was completed in the early 1900s, it was redesigned after the "Big Ben" tower of the British Parliament by a Benedictine monk

who dabbled in architecture. As a result, the existing St. Joseph, Jasper is an

imposing but quite bizarre monument that bears little resemblance to

Druiding's original concept.7

6. Some information on Druiding is taken from my 1994 University of Louisville master's thesis The

Church Architecture of Adolphus Druiding. However, in the last two years I have obtained large amounts

of new information on Druiding's work, rendering obsolete many of the views and statements presented in

the thesis. This article is an up-to-date reflection of my research on Druiding as of early 1996. However, I

am still working to identify and document the over 400 churches and other structures designed by this

incredibly prolific architect.

7. For information on St. Joseph, Jasper, see Albert Kleber, O.S.B, St. Joseph Parish of Jasper, Indiana

(St. Meinrad, Indiana: Abbey Press, 1937). Druiding's original watercolor facade rendering of St. Joseph was also reproduced in historical brochures of the 1980s. The watercolor is reportedly located at St.

Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana, although the abbey has no record of the drawing's existence and cannot

locate it. Druiding built a complex of buildings at St. Meinrad in 1872, and a drawing exists of his master

scheme for the monastery. It featured a very elaborate Romanesque Revival chapel which was never con

structed. Druiding's St. Meinrad was gutted by fire in 1887 and rebuilt, but the present church is the work

of Brother Adrian Wewer and was constructed in 1899-1907.


-#. '

*f- X Fig. 4: Adolphus Druiding,

0. J

I Cathedral ofGreen Bay, 1873-1880, A |\"

% front elevation sketch (Courtesy:

l\ ']' i \ Sister Ella Raster, Diocese of Green

!^^^^'^ _^ffl__ll_P^ design was for St. John Nepomuk

^^Wmm ^

' - - MmmmmmW."

Church in St. Louis, the oldest Czech

v " Ê^S. -A^jL\' \ I'^BSmmmm^ congregation in the United States. '

J i" S^^^te^M^'i^^^^HK^ Accounts indicate that this building ^v'' ̂ M^BMIJ^P^'^fgH^tM^ was a simple hall church of red brick, -

I ̂ ^^S^HhHL^^B^^^ with a single spire in the center of the " '^ S BJHJ^^^^HBB^^^Sy^^ manl facade. Unfortunately, this

*$*41SHSf ^^^^^B_l{_lH__^j "

building was almost completely lev ' * :

^BP ?_____HP^Hi__K ^' e'e(J by a tornado in 1896. The church <g,'

. ' Uj: * < H^^' ^tBttMjSS^mmmmsS/l'W' "* t lfi'i^^mmmp 4aH - ' '^

r** *r* JMlflp ^BBP__^>'^^___g-^ '-^ was reconstmcted in 1897, and most

^ 3 iiSp EHB^^HK|î' 'i^f ?f ̂ e original main facade was intact k ,;\t % WgM} ^WmWmmmmWmm^mmm' ^W$ enou?h to be integrated into the new

- \ ÎPf^ ll___SII_____i_ ifeS Druiding's love for patterned brick

îl^^ work. It contains numerous crosses

and other patterns recessed into the

walls, and a distinctive corbelled zig-zag pattern running along the facade

gables. Such brickwork is commonly seen in the Gothic architecture of

Germany's northern regions, and probably reflects Druiding's Hannoverian

origins. The St. John Nepomuk facade also makes use of the contrast in color

between the light tones of limestone or yellow brick, and the deeper color of

red brick. Such tonal effects are common in Druiding's work and are one of

the characteristics that set him apart from Himpler, who preferred monochro

matic exteriors.

One of Druiding's important early accomplishments was his design for the

cathedral in Green Bay, Wisconsin. However, determining the extent of

Druiding's input into the design has been a complicated process. Recent litera

ture claims that Francis Xavier Krautbauer, the second bishop of Green Bay, was responsible for the cathedral's design. An early elevation sketch of the

cathedral (Fig. 4) has traditionally been attributed to Krautbauer, who suppos

edly studied architecture in Munich. To further complicate matters, an early woodcut print of the cathedral design exists which shows different towers than

the ones seen in the architectural sketch mentioned above. Cathedral histories

claim that the design was reviewed and altered by a New York architect after


initial drawings by Krautbauer, possibly accounting for the changed towers.8

Given all of this information, there appears to be little room for the influence

of Adolphus Druiding. However, there is hard evidence that the cathedral's original design was the

work of Druiding. The idea for a new cathedral in Green Bay was originated

by Krautbauer's predecessor, Bishop Joseph Melcher. An 1873 ledger of the

Green Bay Diocese records payment to Adolphus Druiding for a set of prelim

inary drawings for "St. Mary's Cathedral," the name Melcher used to refer to

the project.91 am confident that figure 4 is part of that set of drawings, proba

bly the only original Druiding architectural sketch in existence today.10 The

woodcut of the cathedral facade showing the altered towers is probably a prod uct of Krautbauer's fund-raising efforts in Germany. Krautbauer was able to

convince the Ludwigmissionsverein (Ludwig Mission Society) in Munich to

donate a considerable sum of money to finance the construction of Green

Bay's cathedral. However, in exchange, the mission society insisted that

Krautbauer model his cathedral after the Munich Ludwigskirche, which had

been designed by Friedrich von Gartner in 1829. In 1873, another church in the northern United States had been modeled

after the Ludwigskirche. SS. Peter and Paul Church in St. Paul, Minnesota had

been built as a loose copy of the Munich church, and was reputedly designed

by Joseph Reidl, the court architect of Bavaria. Krautbauer apparently had a

print made that sliced the tall towers off of the SS. Peter and Paul design and

added them to Druiding's facade. He then sent a copy of the print to the

Missionsverein's directors, who were no doubt happy to receive an image that

looked like the Ludwigskirche. Krautbauer may have never intended to add

these fantastically tall towers to the cathedral, and likely created the print

sheerly for funding purposes. The spires were left unbuilt at the dedication of the cathedral in 1881, and classical cupolas were added to the cathedral towers

by Green Bay architects in the early 1900s.

Green Bay's cathedral shows how easily the role of an out-of-town architect could be forgotten, especially if the building project involved was supervised by an influential and popular cleric. Krautbauer was greatly admired in the Green Bay community, and his death in 1885 after returning from Rome inten sified the respect and adoration of the people. Although Druiding was called on by Krautbauer's successor, Bishop Katzer, to act as a consultant in a school

8. One Hundredth Anniversary of the Building and Dedication of St. Francis Xavier Cathedral (Green

Bay, 1981). 9. In my work to attribute the Green Bay Cathedral to Druiding, I am greatly indebted to Sister Ella

Kaster, CSJ, who has provided primary source evidence of Druiding's authorship of the design. 10. The drawing is labeled "R.C. Cathedral, Greenbay, Wis", which is how Druiding consistently refers

to the cathedral in his catalogs. It is doubtful that Krautbauer would have labeled his own drawing of his

planned cathedral in such generic terms. In addition, the writing on the drawing closely matches Druiding's handwriting and lettering style.


Fig. 5: Druiding, St. Mary's Church,

Huntingburg, IN. 1884, exterior render

ing (Druiding, Church Architecture).

building project in the 1880s, eventually Druiding's involve

ment in the cathedral project was

forgotten. Meanwhile, the reputa tion and esteem for Bishop

Krautbauer became greater with

time, until he was finally given full credit for the financing, con

struction, and design of the cathe

dral.

While the middle and late

1870s found Himpler working on

some of his most important mid

western parish churches, the mid

1870s appear to have brought a

slump in Druiding's church build

ing. There are only a few recorded

church designs by him from 1873-1879. The financial panic of

1873 probably slowed building in the German-American communi

ty, and the poor and middle

income parishes that formed the

mainstay of Druiding's business

may have taken longer to recover

from the financial downturn. Recovery seems to have occurred around 1880, when business revived. Druiding entered into one of the most fruitful periods of his career. In the 1880s he produced designs for scores of churches, most of

them in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and Wisconsin. In this period, Druiding capital ized on his ability to accommodate the needs of German Catholic congrega tions of every size and income level. Despite his concern for economy, and the

similarity of some of his designs, he was careful to give each church of this

period a unique combination of details and features so that no two churches

were ever exactly the same.

St. Mary's Church (1885) in Huntingburg, Indiana, a small town near

Jasper, is a fine example of Druiding's work for a small congregation. The

exterior of the church as envisioned by the architect (Fig. 5) has a quiet, rural

quality, with simple brick surfaces and a plain wooden steeple and tower rising to a somewhat modest 135 feet.11 On the interior, the church has a modified

version of the German hallchurch plan (Fig 9). The center aisle is wider, and

11. Druiding, Church Architecture. The tower was eventually built out of brick in a different design.


slightly taller than the side aisles, but all three aisles are close

enough in height to produce an

open, unified sense of space.

Druiding's use of the hallchurch

plan assured that the church had

the arcade-like perspective of a

traditional Gothic church, but also

allowed enough openness to make

the church seem unified, visually

linking all parts of the church

with the sanctuary. The wide cen

ter aisle also gives the church a

somewhat broader proportion,

preventing the isolation of rear

pews from the altar, a phenome non often experienced in longer, narrower churches.

Druiding built countless

churches similar in style and scale

to St. Mary's in the towns of

Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Some of these buildings have

hallchurch interiors, but many have an open boxy interior with

no division of the structure into aisles. In some cases this would appear to

result from a desire to create a preaching space superior to that of the

hallchurch. Some clergy may have desired that no obstructions at all came

between the pulpit and the congregation. On the other hand, construction of

such a simple interior was probably less expensive than construction of an

elaborate system of columns and multiple vaults seen in the hallchurch. Many of the churches built for congregations with modest financial resources often

have this very simple interior configuration. It may have been one of

Druiding's ways to make brick churches affordable to poor congregations.

Druiding also designed larger city churches during the 1880s, and before

the period of urban upheavals that began in the 1950s, there were few major midwestern cities that did not have at least one Druiding church within their

boundaries. In the early 1880s these German parishes in the inner city were

often large in population, but lacking in funds, so Druiding was presented the

problem of designing relatively large churches that fit the liturgical needs and

limited budgets of the congregations. This often led to churches constructed of

red brick, with only sparing amounts of limestone trim, and relatively simple

Fig. 6: Druiding, St. Joseph Church,

Louisville, 1883-86, exterior rendering

(Druiding, Church Architecture).


I Mi jhSEK

^'^^m^^^^^^^f^SmmSmmmm '

Fig. 7: Druiding, St. Lawrence,

Cincinnati, 1886-94, exterior rendering

(Building Budget, Chicago, December,

1886,150; courtesy The Art Institute of Chicago).

interior configurations. The best

example of such a structure is St.

Joseph's Church in Louisville,

Kentucky built between 1883 and

1886.

This congregation had existed

for almost twenty years when the

decision was made to build. A

design competition was held,

about which there is little infor

mation except that Druiding' sketch was selected by the build

ing committee. The cost of the

church was to be kept under

$40,000,12 while in contrast

Himpler had projected the cost of

Cincinnati's St. Francis De Sales

at $200,000.13 St. Joseph's twin

spired exterior (Fig. 6) was proba

bly influenced by the 1880 com

pletion of Cologne Cathedral as a

monument of German national

ism. The twin spires of St. Joseph were to rise to a height of 170

feet, dominating the landscape of

the low river valley in which the

church was located. Druiding's

description of the church indicated that the spires were to be capped with glass crosses which would be illuminated at night by a combination of gas flame

and electric light.14 This was surely Druiding's most fantastic and theatrical

concept for drawing attention to a church, intended to make St. Joseph literally a beacon for German ethnic culture in Louisville's east end. (The feature was

not carried out). The rest of the facade was adapted from the typical French

and German Gothic pattern often utilized by Himpler: a rose window in the

center of the facade with three gabled entry portals below. The church exterior

was decorated with the traditional corbelled and recessed brickwork of north

ern Germany, but was also fitted with trim built out of thin sheets of galvanized iron.

For a church of its size, the interior of St. Joseph is extremely simple in con

12. Ibid.

13. Sf. Francis De Sales Centennial.

14. Druiding, Church Architecture.


figuration. Like many of the modest small town churches designed by

Druiding, this urban church has a barn-like, open interior, its ceiling composed of a single flattened out set of wood and plaster ribbed vaults. Again, it is not

clear whether money or liturgical preference dictated this plan. The congrega tion was mainly composed of people whose lives had been devastated by a

series of river floods in 1882. The necessary recovery and rebuilding dimin

ished donations to the church building fund, and may have led to a more sim

ple, economically affordable design. On the other hand, the church was being administered by the Franciscans, an order which emphasized preaching very

strongly. This open boxy church was a superior preaching space, with no

columns between the people and the pulpit of the church, which was to be

mounted high off of the ground on the church's left side. Parish histories often

proudly point out the fact that the church interior is without pillars. This plan, while excellent for preaching, is lacking in Gothic authenticity.

Its vast openness is contrary to the usual structural complexity seen in French

or German Gothic churches. It is doubtful that a more scholarly architect like

Himpler would have ever designed such an incorrect Gothic interior. The St.

Joseph congregation seems to have sensed that the interior plan was overly

plain and simple for a German Catholic church, so they filled the church with a

stunning collection of German woodwork furnishings that remained intact

until just recently. In addition to the church's three main altars and communion

rail of 1886, two large freestanding confessionals (one mounted with a pulpit) and a series of shrines and statues were added to the church in the early and

mid-1890s. The church was also richly stenciled and embellished with stained

glass windows depicting the Twelve Apostles. In 1885, Druiding relocated to Chicago, undoubtedly aware of that city's

explosive growth and the opportunities that accompanied it. The move also

probably reflected a desire to be closer to the northern industrial cities that

were taking the place of the Ohio and Mississippi valley regions as Druiding's most fertile working grounds. However, the opening of Druiding's Chicago

period saw one more commission in the Ohio Valley, which began with a

request for plans from St. Lawrence Parish in Cincinnati, Ohio. St. Lawrence

has an interesting relationship to Himpler's St. Francis De Sales Church, as the

two parishes were German Catholic rivals on opposite sides of town. They are

the two largest German Gothic churches in Cincinnati, with St. Francis presid

ing over the east side, while St. Lawrence is nestled in the western hills of the

city. Similar in scale and ambition, the two churches together provide us with a

summary of many qualities that defined German Gothic architecture in

America, yet they also show the contrast in buildings brought about by differ

ences in parish finances, and by differences in architects and their philoso

phies. While both churches are typical of German Catholic Gothicism in America,


their differences and the reasons behind them are as striking as the similarities.

St. Francis De Sales was built first, and is essentially the flagship of German

Gothic architecture in Cincinnati. Its tall spire and fine stonework make the

192 foot long church one of the Queen City's great landmarks. The rivalry between the German Catholics of Cincinnati's west and east sides caused

members of West Cincinnati's predominantly German St. Lawrence Parish to

aspire to build a church every bit as striking and elaborate as St. Francis De

Sales. However, they were a smaller parish and had less money. Druiding was

the perfect man to solve this problem, a designer accustomed to producing

striking results with limited funds.

However, obtaining the commission for St. Lawrence was no easy task for

Druiding. A competition was held for the design of the church, with designs

requested from Druiding, and from local architects John Bast and Samuel

Hannaford. The latter was a tremendously successful architect who in 1873

had created a magnificent statement of German ethnicity at Cincinnati's

Romanesque Revival St. George Catholic Church. Nevertheless, the St.

Lawrence building committee did not receive a timely submission form

Hannaford and disqualified him. They then proceeded to deadlock between the

designs of Bast and Druiding. Finally a new building committee was formed,

and it voted to allow the pastor of St. Lawrence to make the choice of which

design to use. The pastor then passed the task on to Cincinnati's Archbishop William Henry Elder, who was ultimately responsible for the selection of the

Druiding design.15 The design that Druiding submitted appears to have been an attempt to cre

ate a church that equaled the scale and grandeur of St. Francis De Sales, but

that was within the financial reach of St. Lawrence. Both churches have very similar exterior stonework, and the composition of St. Lawrence's facade (Fig.

7) is somewhat similar to that of St. Francis De Sales. With Druiding previous

ly known as a builder of brick churches, St. Lawrence is the first known

Druiding church that was planned by the architect with an all stone exterior. As

a strong proponent of brick construction, Druiding probably only reluctantly

agreed to design the church with a stone exterior. He was no doubt persuaded to do so by the St. Lawrence congregation, who wanted a church that was the

equal of St. Francis De Sales in as many ways as possible. If Druiding felt hesitancy about building this church with stone, he had

good reason; after a year of construction work on the church, the parish had

exhausted its building fund. The pastor of the church did not want to borrow

money to continue; the whole project was put on hold. Masses were held in the

basement of the church, and the structure stood for a number of years complet

15. Information on the design competition is taken from Deborah Homing's 1994 St. Lawrence Church:

Mother Church of Price Hill. The work is a superb piece of writing, and an accurate, scholarly parish histo

ry which is successful in distinguishing fact from legend.


ed only just above ground level.

Finally in 1893 enough money was amassed to resume work on

the church, and the dedication

took place in 1894, eight years after the plans had been submitted.

Although a less expensive

building, St. Lawrence is in many

ways a worthy counterpart to St.

Francis De Sales. It is 165 feet

long and 68 feet wide, and feels

similar in scale. Its asymmetrical towers dominate the surrounding area in the same way that the

tower of St. Francis De Sales

dominates its environment.

Probably the most noticeable

economy made in the St.

Lawrence design was the omission

of transepts, the side extensions

that give St. Francis De Sales its

cruciform shape. To counteract

this, Druiding placed a small spire

(known as a fleche) on the roof of St. Lawrence, and built two large stone side

gables under it, giving the illusion of a cruciform church. On the interior, the

arcade arch under this area is raised, as is the clerestory and triforium, once

again to give the appearance of a cross shaped church. While it is not cruci

form, the floor plan of St. Lawrence is similar to that of St. Francis De Sales in

terms of proportion. Both churches have a long narrow plan with a wide center

aisle and fairly small side aisles. However, Druiding made no pretenses of cre

ating a hall church space at St. Lawrence. The center aisle of the church is

much taller than the side aisles, allowing for clerestory windows that are lit

directly from the outside.

Despite the differences, St. Lawrence is closer in visual effect to Himpler's work than many of Druiding's other churches. Druiding created a wide variety of churches in the 1880s and 1890s, and experimented with many techniques,

materials and colors. At St. Patrick Church in South Bend (1887) he used a

modified version of the St. Lawrence facade and an interior configuration simi

lar to that of St. Joseph, Louisville. However, he decorated the ceiling of St.

Patrick with elaborate English Gothic ribs (liernes), and created a dramatic

color scheme on the exterior. Druiding built St. Patrick's out of pale yellow brick, but then used terra-cotta trim and bands of bright red brick to create a

Fig. 5: Druiding, St. Michael Church,

Cleveland, 1889, interior (Courtesy:

Library of Congress/HABS).

70 U.S. Catholic Historian

I ? T I 1 I I __ ^m It i"""' ~>ifiaii,Tiiiii, 1HHB

Fig. 9: Druiding, St. John Cantius

Church, Chicago, 1894, exterior

(Courtesy: Archives of the Archdiocese

of Chicago).

I striking Italian Gothic color

i scheme as wild as anything creat

ed by England's William Butterfield (an architect known for

using brightly contrasting pat terned masonry). Such a fusion of

completely unrelated, and some

would say, incompatible Gothic

styles would have certainly horri

fied architects like Himpler who

had more discriminating tastes.

Such wild experimentation was

less common in Germany itself, where critics held Catholic archi

| tects up to a demanding standard

of German Gothic architectural

purity. In the 1870s and 80s, how

ever, the American climate was

one of architectural experimenta tion, and excesses like the ones

seen at Druiding's St. Patrick's

were accepted as products of their

age.

Druiding's German Catholic churches of the late 1880s and 1890s are gen

erally not quite as colorful or unconventional as St. Patrick's, South Bend.

Most are large cruciform churches which involve some form of the hallchurch

plan. The vast majority are Gothic in design, and show mostly traits of German

and French Gothic. The largest and most prominent of these was St. Michael

the Archangel Church in Cleveland (1887-1892). While the facade of this

church is adapted from St. Lawrence, the building is fully cruciform, and the

interior is a stunningly open fusion of the hallchurch and basilican-clerestory

plans (Fig. 8). The main aisle of the nave is broad and tall, and supported on

thin columns that allow an open view into the high side aisles. The crossing of

the nave and transepts occurs just in front of the sanctuary, and brings the inte

rior to an open, spacious crescendo. The interior is filled with a profusion of

German woodcarving and statues, adding to the richness and complexity of the

overall design. The church was to be built of brick, but the congregation insist

ed on brownstone. St. Michael's Church in Rochester, New York (1889) is a

Druiding work of similar scale and elaboration, with a single massive tower in

the middle of the main facade.

One unusual example of Druiding's work for German Catholics is St. Mary of Sorrows Church in Buffalo, New York. He originally intended to build a


church similar to St. Lawrence, but the congregation had other ideas. The plan he eventually resubmitted was cruciform, basilican and basically Gothic in

form. But the entire building was planned with the round arches characteristic

of the Romanesque Revival mode, and the exterior was planned with an octag onal crossing dome and an apse-like three-sided bay entrance facade, features

never before seen in a Druiding design. Clearly the congregation had prevailed

upon Druiding to design a church based on the Romanesque cathedrals of the

Rhineland, with Worms and Speyer the likely models. Druiding, not used to

emulating specific monuments, tried to graft elements of these buildings on to

one of his typical Gothic church plans.16 The end result is an architectural con

coction even more strange than St. Patrick's of South Bend. The exterior com

bines the Romanesque crossing dome and facade with a tall Gothic-like spire,

producing one of the most unusually picturesque skylines of any nineteenth

century building. In the 1890s, such a stylistically "incorrect" church would

have surely been sharply condemned by Germany's Catholic architectural crit

ics and establishment. Only in America could such a unique, eclectic architec

tural fantasy actually gain acceptance and come to life.

The church was built beginning in 1886 and completed in 1891. Because of

the expense of construction, the crossing dome was eliminated from the

design, and replaced by a small fleche, adding to the Gothic qualities of the

design. The building has gone unused since the parish moved to smaller quar ters in the 1980s. Plans to tear down the church have been put forward repeat

edly, but there have been energetic efforts by Buffalo's preservation communi

ty to save the building.17 It would be a shame to see the destruction of this most

strange and unusual of Druiding's church designs for German Catholics.

Druiding continued to design for German Catholics up into the 1890s, but

by then, the major period of their church building had passed. Ironically,

Druiding spent the last years of his career designing not German churches, but

instead some of the major Polish churches of Chicago. While a few of

Chicago's Polish congregations built Gothic structures, most Poles built in a

more Classical style. They may have simply favored Classical architecture, or

they may have been responding to the re-popularization of Classical forms in

America brought on by the 1893 Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, and by other influences.

At first Druiding attempted to introduce Classicism into his church designs

gradually by combining elements of the Romanesque and Renaissance styles. As with the fusion of Gothic and Romanesque at St. Mary of Sorrows, this

16. I am indebted to Msgr. Walter Kern of the Archives of the Buffalo Diocese for information and

early sketches of St. Mary of Sorrows.

17. See Andrea Oppenheimer Dean's article "The Architect" in Historic Preservation (May/June, 1994), 12-15. Plans have been put forward to convert the church into a neighborhood arts and community

center.


mixture of styles sometimes led to very unusual results. The most notable

illustration of this blend of styles is St. John Cantius Catholic Church in

Chicago (1894). When one views this church from the rear, the corbelled

brickwork, capped buttresses and rose windows are reminiscent of Druiding's

early work in a simple Romanesque Revival mode. Walking around to view

the facade, the viewer is presented with a violent contrast. One is confronted

with an all-stone creation centered on a pediment supported by square Corinthian pilasters. Under this pediment are three arched doorways with mas

sive Richardsonian voussoirs. This arrangement is then flanked by two towers, the shorter of which ends in a tiny slender cupola, while the other tower climbs

much higher, and ends in a domed and scrolled composition with Baroque overtones. The cruciform interior, arranged with dormer-lit windows to imitate a basilican clerestory, is more unified, with barrel vaults, impost blocks and

Tuscan columns producing a decidedly Classical atmosphere. This fusion style did not pervade Druiding's Classical work of the mid to

late 1890s. His Mount St. Joseph Convent in Cincinnati (1894) and St. Hedwig Church in Chicago (1899) both possess well proportioned and impressive Renaissance interiors. At St. Hedwig, Druiding applied the basilican, cruci

form, twin towered format he used in the Gothic style to a Renaissance Revival

church but carried it off well. The interior's ceiling coffers, granite Corinthian

columns and saucer-domed side aisles produce a noble, pleasing effect (Fig. 9). Druiding's exterior plan called for two magnificent twin-tiered cupolas on

the front towers, which would have given the primary facade a majestic pres ence in its residential setting (Fig. 10). Unfortunately, this scheme was never

carried out, and the existing towers are crowned with small, squat cupolas. Nevertheless, St. Hedwig's noble interior easily qualifies it as one of

Druiding's most successful ecclesiastical designs. It is also probably the last

major building designed by Druiding, who died in late 1899 or early 1900. St.

Hedwig is one of Druiding's finest churches, and possesses a grandness of

scale and dignity of materials found in only a few of Druiding's other designs. It is ironic that a German-born architect who made his career designing

German Gothic churches spent his last days creating an exceptional church

design in the Italian Renaissance style while working for a Polish congrega tion.

In many ways the age of Druiding and Himpler was a unique period in

American history. The German-Americans of 1865-1900 had the combination

of faith, funds, and ethnic pride needed to build large, impressive parish churches. They also had access to the German-American craftsmen and archi

tects who could design and furnish these churches. As the architects of the

1870s and 1880s faded into retirement, a group of second generation German

Catholic architects did arise in America at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Although they were American trained, and not as prolific as the generation of


1865-1900, they did build a num

ber of superb German Gothic

churches around the Midwest.

Practicing in Chicago were Henry

Schlacks, a designer of numerous

churches in the Chicago area,18 and Hermann Gaul, who worked

on German Gothic designs in

Chicago and Indianapolis. St.

Louis had Viktor Klutho, an

important ecclesiastical architect

involved in the design of St.

Louis' other great Gothic monu

ment of German Catholicism, St.

Francis De Sales Church (1907). Even after the persecution of

Germans in World War I, St. Louis

architects continued to build

churches with a strong German

architectural character. The part

nership of Frank Ludewig and

Henry Dreisoerner produced some

of the last great monuments of

German Gothic and Romanesque in the Midwest. Their masterpiece is St.

John's Church and Rectory of Covington, Kentucky (1926) picturesquely

perched on a hill overlooking the Ohio River and the nearby Cincinnati sky line. Influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement, Ludewig and Dreisoerner

did not use features from great cathedrals to design this church, but instead

modeled it after the parish churches of rural Germany.

By the 1920s, many second- and third-generation Germans-Americans were

beginning to assimilate. Use of the German language was fast fading, and

many families were abandoning the urban neighborhoods that had served as

the cradle of the ethnic community. New suburban Catholic parishes of the

1920s and 30s often downplayed ethnicity, and churches were built in the

Early Christian and Byzantine Styles, or went back to the English Gothic

forms advocated by influential designers like Ralph Adams Cram. These years

brought about the end of German Catholic architecture in America.

The great German Gothic parish churches of America were thus built over a

fairly short period of time, and churches like them will certainly never be built

Fig. 10: Druiding, St. Hedwig, view of

facade as planned by Druiding.

Towering cupolas rising above roofline were never completed (Courtesy: St.

Hedwig Parish).

18. Schlacks' finest German Gothic work is St. Paul's Church in Chicago (1897-99). Its all-brick interi

or is unusual, and was likely modeled after Johannes Otzen's Lutherkirche in Berlin (1889-94).

74 U S. Catholic Historian

again. Sadly, since the 1950s many of these churches have disappeared due to

urban decline and suburban flight. Other churches have been robbed of charac

ter by deterioration and neglect, or on the other hand by inappropriate or insen

sitive remodeling. In spite of these losses, many immigrant churches still

remain in a good state of preservation. These churches of Himpler, Druiding and their contemporaries are an important element in the patchwork of

American ethnicity, religion, and culture. They are worthy of preservation for

their artistic qualities and for their status as an irreplaceable link in the chain of

American history. It is my hope that the existing legacy of work by immigrant church architects will be recognized and appreciated today, so that it may be

passed on as a reminder of America's rich ethnic history.

german parish churches of himpler and druiding hampton 1997

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