St. Wenceslaus Church, Baltimore

St. Wenceslaus Church
St. Wenceslaus Church, 2014.
St. Wenceslaus Church
Coordinates: 39°18′01″N 76°35′13″W / 39.300278°N 76.586944°W / 39.300278; -76.586944
Location 2111 Ashland Ave., Baltimore
Country United States
Denomination Roman Catholic
Website St. Wenceslaus Catholic Church
History
Founded November 1872 (1872-11)
Founder(s) Bohemian immigrants
Dedication St. Wenceslaus
Dedicated  ()
Consecrated  ()
Architecture
Functional status Active
Heritage designation For Bohemian immigrants
Architectural type Church
Style Italianate
Groundbreaking 1914 (1914)
Completed 1914 (1914)
Specifications
Materials Granite

The Church of St. Wenceslaus (Czech: Kostel sv. Václava) is a parish church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore located in the Middle East neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland.

History

St. Wenceslaus was founded in 1872 in a neighborhood of East Baltimore that was then known as Little Bohemia. The parish was created primarily to serve the Bohemian (Czech) community in Baltimore.[1][2] Church services were originally held in both the English and Czech languages.[3] The present church was built in 1914, and at that time the church had 7,000 Bohemian Catholic members. By 1920 the church was the fourth largest in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore.

In recent years, the ethnic character of St. Wenceslaus parish has undergone a gradual change from a majority Czech parish to one that is multicultural and multiracial, first as many Poles and Lithuanians moved into the neighborhood, and then as the neighborhood shifted to having an African American majority.

St. Wenceslaus was founded and staffed by priests and lay brothers of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, known as the Redemptorists, until 1999. Since then, it has been administered by friars of the Franciscan Third Order Regular.

Architecture

The building's overall design is in the Italianate style.

See also

References

  1. ↑ John Thomas Scharf, History of Baltimore City and County (1881) p 543
  2. ↑ "History". St. Wenceslaus Catholic Church. Retrieved 14 December 2012.
  3. ↑ Tim Almaguer, Friends of Patterson Park Baltimore's Patterson Park (2006) p 81
St. Wenceslaus Lyceum, June 2014.
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