Church-of-immaculate-conception-knoxville-tn2

The Church of the Immaculate Conception is a historic

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

church located at 414 West Vine on Summit Hill in

Knoxville, Tennessee Knoxville is a city in Knox County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. It is located on the Tennessee River and had a population of 190,740 at the 2020 United States census. It is the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Division ...

. Knoxville was home to a small Catholic congregation by the early 1800s. Father

Stephen Badin Stephen Theodore Badin (born Étienne Théodore Badin; 17 July 1768 – 21 April 1853) was a French-American Catholic priest who was the first ordained in the United States. He spent most of his long career ministering to widely dispersed Catholic ...

traveled to the city on several occasions to visit this congregation.I.P. Martin, Mary Rothrock (ed.), ''The French Broad-Holston Country: A History of Knox County, Tennessee'' (East Tennessee Historical Society, 1972), pp. 296-297. Railroad construction in the late 1840s and early 1850s brought scores of Irish immigrant laborers to the city, considerably boosting the congregation's numbers. The Church of the Immaculate Conception, the city's first Catholic parish, was founded in 1855 on the site of the current church. The name of the church was inspired by

Pope Pius IX Pope Pius IX (; born Giovanni Maria Battista Pietro Pellegrino Isidoro Mastai-Ferretti; 13 May 1792 – 7 February 1878) was head of the Catholic Church from 1846 to 1878. His reign of nearly 32 years is the longest verified of any pope in hist ...

's elevation of

Immaculate Conception The Immaculate Conception is the doctrine that the Virgin Mary was free of original sin from the moment of her conception. It is one of the four Mariology, Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church. Debated by medieval theologians, it was not def ...

to official church doctrine the previous year.The Story of Immaculate Conception Church
, ICKnoxville.org. Retrieved: 28 December 2013. Father

Abram Joseph Ryan Abram Joseph Ryan (born Matthew Abraham Ryan; February 5, 1838 – April 22, 1886) was an Catholic Church in the United States, American Catholic poet, priest, journalist, orator, and former Congregation of the Mission, Vincentian. Historians disa ...

(1836–1886), the Poet-Priest of the Confederacy, was once a priest at this parish. He was the author of the ''Requiem of the Lost Cause,

The Conquered Banner "The Conquered Banner" was one of the most popular of the post-American Civil War, Civil War Confederate States of America, Confederate poems. It was written by Father Abram Joseph Ryan, a Roman Catholic priest and Confederate Army chaplain. He has ...

'', written soon after the surrender at Appomattox. The existing church sanctuary was constructed in 1886, in front of the earlier building. The brick church was designed by Joseph Baumann, who along with

George Franklin Barber George Franklin Barber (July 31, 1854 – February 17, 1915) was an American architect known for the house designs he marketed worldwide through mail-order catalogs. Barber was one of the most successful residential architects of the late Vict ...

was one of Knoxville's first major professional architects. The church was designed in the

Victorian Gothic Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic or neo-Gothic) is an Architectural style, architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half ...

style of architecture. The sanctuary is two stories tall, with a central clock tower in a turreted spire. The church remains a Roman Catholic parish in the downtown portion of the city. However, Sacred Heart Cathedral in the west Knoxville community of Bearden is the seat of the Catholic Bishop.

References

External links

Church of the Immaculate Conception website
Roman Catholic churches in Tennessee Roman Catholic Diocese of Knoxville Churches in Knoxville, Tennessee Roman Catholic churches completed in 1885 19th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in the United States {{Tennessee-RC-church-stub

References

Further reading

External links