20. St. Anne’s Catholic, 1919

Now Mercy Memorial Baptist
2474 North 37th Street (at Wright Street)
Architects: Brust and Philipp

The Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee established St. Anne’s Parish in 1894, as the city’s tenth German-language parish. At that time there were also five Polish parishes in the city, one Bohemian (Czech), and eight English. St. Anne’s Parish constructed its first church in 1895, which served until completion of the present church on the same property in 1921.

For St. Anne’s Parish, the architectural firm of Brust and Philipp designed a Romanesque Revival church that is a smaller version of their design for St. Joseph’s Convent Chapel on the South Side. Like the convent chapel, completed several years earlier, St. Anne’s has twin façade towers and a low, eight-sided tower at the crossing of the nave and transepts. On the interior, a shallow dome of stained glass at the crossing is illuminated by the windows in the tower. St. Anne’s has a more prominent entrance, with five pairs of doors, since it was a parish church and had to accommodate worshippers from the surrounding neighborhood. Another difference is that St. Anne’s is not a basilican plan church, as is the convent chapel. St. Anne’s has tall side walls, in contrast to the chapel’s lower side aisles with clerestory windows in the taller nave.

With the consolidation of the city’s Catholic parishes in the present century, St. Anne’s was sold to a Protestant congregation. The building was briefly occupied by Capital Christian Church, and in recent years has been the home of Mercy Memorial Baptist.

Sources:
Feast of St. Anne in Our 83rd Year. St. Anne’s Catholic Church, 1977.