Saint Bernard's Church Complex is a

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a place/building for Christian religious activities and praying * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian comm ...

school A school is the educational institution (and, in the case of in-person learning, the Educational architecture, building) designed to provide learning environments for the teaching of students, usually under the direction of teachers. Most co ...

, and rectory that occupies a full block in

Watertown, Wisconsin Watertown is a city in Jefferson and Dodge counties in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. The population was 22,926 at the 2020 census, of which 14,674 were in Jefferson County and 8,252 were in Dodge County. Division Street, several blocks north of ...

. It was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 2003.

History

St. Bernard's parish was organized in 1843, when Wisconsin was a territory. In 1846 a modest 27 by 36-foot wooden church with Gothic Revival styling was constructed for the parish on the site of the current church. Watertown was largely populated by

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

and

Irish immigrants The Irish diaspora () refers to ethnic Irish people and their descendants who live outside the island of Ireland. The phenomenon of migration from Ireland is recorded since the Early Middle Ages,Flechner, Roy; Meeder, Sven (2017). The Irish ...

, and St. Bernard's attracted many of the Irish minority. With A

rectory A clergy house is the residence, or former residence, of one or more priests or ministers of a given religion, serving as both a home and a base for the occupant's ministry. Residences of this type can have a variety of names, such as manse, p ...

was added in 1847 and a church school building in 1857. By the 1872 the parish needed a larger building, and the

Holy Cross Fathers The Congregation of Holy Cross (), abbreviated CSC, is a Catholic clerical religious congregation of pontifical right for men founded in 1837 by Basil Moreau, in Le Mans, France. Moreau also founded the Marianites of Holy Cross for women, now d ...

sent Reverend

William Corby William Corby, CSC (October 2, 1833 – December 28, 1897) was an American Catholic priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross and a Union Army chaplain in the American Civil War attached to the Irish Brigade. He served twice as president of t ...

to St. Bernard's as pastor, charged with getting a new church built. Corby commissioned

Patrick Keely Patrick Charles Keely (August 9, 1816 — August 11, 1896) was an Irish-American architect based in Brooklyn, New York, and Providence, Rhode Island. He was a prolific designer of nearly 600 churches and hundreds of other institutional buildin ...

, architect of many Catholic churches out east, to design the new church. Keely designed the building which stands to this day. It was built from 1873 to 1876 with money and sweat of the parishioners. The cornerstone, laid in 1873, was carved from a piece of the

Rock of Cashel The Rock of Cashel ( ), also known as Cashel of the Kings and St. Patrick's Rock, is a historical site located dramatically above a plain at Cashel, County Tipperary, Cashel, County Tipperary, Republic of Ireland, Ireland. History According t ...

, from back in dear old

Erin Erin is a personal name taken from the Hiberno-English word for Ireland, originating from the Irish word ''"Éirinn"''. "Éirinn" is the dative case of the Irish word for Ireland, "Éire", genitive "Éireann", the dative being used in preposi ...

. Keely designed the church in

High Victorian Gothic High Victorian Gothic was an eclectic architectural style and movement during the mid-late 19th century. It is seen by architectural historians as either a sub-style of the broader Gothic Revival style, or a separate style in its own right. Prom ...

style, characterized by the emphasis on vertical lines, the pointed-topped arches, and the

polychromatic Polychrome is the "practice of decorating architectural elements, sculpture, etc., in a variety of colors." The term is used to refer to certain styles of architecture, pottery, or sculpture in multiple colors. When looking at artworks and a ...

masonry Masonry is the craft of building a structure with brick, stone, or similar material, including mortar plastering which are often laid in, bound, and pasted together by mortar (masonry), mortar. The term ''masonry'' can also refer to the buildin ...

. The floor plan is generally rectangular, with a large square entrance tower at the front and a polygonal

apse In architecture, an apse (: apses; from Latin , 'arch, vault'; from Ancient Greek , , 'arch'; sometimes written apsis; : apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical Vault (architecture), vault or semi-dome, also known as an ' ...

at the back. The foundation is limestone blocks; the walls above are cream brick with contrasting bands of red brick and stone. On the front tower is a spire with clocks on its four faces. That spire rises to 210 feet, and is topped with a cross. Inside, the apse still contains stained glass windows from the 1870s. In the 1890s German immigrant Hermann Michalowski painted large murals of St. Francis, St. Bernard, St. Patrick, and St. Elizabeth on panels in the apse. In 1883 a new rectory (later used as a

convent A convent is an enclosed community of monks, nuns, friars or religious sisters. Alternatively, ''convent'' means the building used by the community. The term is particularly used in the Catholic Church, Lutheran churches, and the Anglican ...

) was built to replace the old one. It was initially two-story and brick with some

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century It ...

details. Later additions have obscured much of the original building, but the interesting roof-line and the iron cresting on the

bay window A bay window is a window space projecting outward from the main walls of a building and forming a bay in a room. A bow window is a form of bay with a curve rather than angular facets; an oriel window is a bay window that does not touch the g ...

remain. In 1892 a larger school building was built to replace the original. It is a two-story building, with round arches suggesting the

Romanesque Revival Romanesque Revival (or Neo-Romanesque) is a style of building employed beginning in the mid-19th century inspired by the 11th- and 12th-century Romanesque architecture. Unlike the historic Romanesque style, Romanesque Revival buildings tended t ...

style. The building is cream brick, with a two-story entry pavilion with corner cylinders like the rolls of a scroll, topped with a stone cross. The school building was largely paid for by Dr. Edward Johnson and the building contractor was Mat Franzen. The school building is the last surviving historic parochial school building in a city where in the late 1800s two thirds of the students attended parochial schools.

References

{{Roman Catholic Diocese of Madison, state=collapsed Churches in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Madison Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Wisconsin Catholic schools in Wisconsin Gothic Revival church buildings in Wisconsin Roman Catholic churches completed in 1873 National Register of Historic Places in Jefferson County, Wisconsin 19th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in the United States