St. Adalbert Church () is a historic church of the

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago The Archdiocese of Chicago () is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction, an archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church located in Northeast Illinois, Northeastern Illinois, in the United States. The Vatican erected it as a diocese in 1843 and e ...

. The church is located on 17th Street between Paulina Street and Ashland Avenue in the Pilsen neighborhood of

Chicago, Illinois Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

. St. Adalbert has served generations of Polish immigrants and their American-born children; at its peak, parish membership numbered 4,000 families with more than 2,000 children enrolled in the school. Today, the church is an anchor for the Mexican immigrants that have made the Pilsen area their home. The church is named after St. Adalbert of Prague. In June 2019, the Archdiocese of Chicago announced that the church would permanently close on July 15, 2019.

History of Saint Adalbert Parish

St. Adalbert parish was founded in 1874 by the Polish

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 ...

community in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. By the time of the church's centennial celebration, the congregation had predominantly Mexican heritage, reflective of greater changes in the surrounding neighborhood. For many years the church held masses in both Polish and Spanish. A shrine of the Mexican patroness

Our Lady of Guadalupe Our Lady of Guadalupe (), also known as the Virgin of Guadalupe (), is a Catholic title of the Blessed Virgin Mary associated with four Marian apparitions to Juan Diego and one to his uncle, Juan Bernardino reported in December 1531, when t ...

is part of the church premises. In 2016, the Archdiocese of Chicago announced that St. Adalbert Church would be closed due to low mass attendance, changing demographics, decline in the overall number of priests, and over $3 million in repairs needed to maintain the church's crumbling buildings. The final mass at St. Adalbert was held on July 14, 2019, and the congregation has been combined with the nearby St. Paul Catholic Church.

Church design and decoration

The church and adjoining rectory were designed by the prolific Chicago catholic church architect, Henry J. Schlacks. It was completed at an estimated cost of $200,000. The interior is modeled after the papal basilica of San Paolo fuori le mura (built between 386 AD and ca. 450, burned 1823 and rebuilt 1825-1854) and closely resembles several other churches designed by Schlacks including the St. Mary of the Lake in Chicago (1913-1917. Not to be confused with the seminary of the same name), Resurrection in Chicago (1914-1917. Later demolished), St. Mark's in Cincinnati (1914-1916), St. Joan of Arc in Indianapolis (1928–29), and the Chapel of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament in Marytown/Libertyville, Illinois (1928-1932. Since 2000, the National Shrine of St. Maximilian Kolbe). The Roman basilica style was first brought to the United States from Germany and the United Kingdom around 1905 through the dioceses of Pittsburgh and Buffalo and Schlacks was one of its earliest advocates. Although the nave of St. Adalbert is inspired by Roman churches which pre-date the Renaissance, the exterior is dressed symmetrically with a pair of 185-foot baroque towers to conform its overall appearance with the so-called ' Polish Cathedral style' befitting the parish church of a largely Polish congregation. In this case, Schlacks seems to have taken the towers of the nineteenth-century St. Stephen's Basilica in Budapest as his loose inspiration. Entrance is through a shallow

portico A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cu ...

with eight massive grey-flecked, rose-colored polished

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

columns, from there to pass through a narrow vestibule with four large recessed fonts in its back wall, and finally to enter the immense main body which has the most magnificent

marble Marble is a metamorphic rock consisting of carbonate minerals (most commonly calcite (CaCO3) or Dolomite (mineral), dolomite (CaMg(CO3)2) that have recrystallized under the influence of heat and pressure. It has a crystalline texture, and is ty ...

work to be found in any church in Chicago. A stern large white-marble statue of the church's patron St. Adalbert, the evangelizer of Poland and martyr, stares down from the massive and elaborate thirty-five ton Cararra marble altar whose ten spiral pillars are capped with a dome-shaped ciborium. On the

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the Choir (architecture), choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may termi ...

arch above the altar are inscribed the opening words of the Polish hymn Bogurodzica which Adalbert himself is said to have composed. And in an F. X. Zettler window to the west, Adalbert again, in green vestments, stands preaching to the surly, slumped

Prussia Prussia (; ; Old Prussian: ''Prūsija'') was a Germans, German state centred on the North European Plain that originated from the 1525 secularization of the Prussia (region), Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order. For centuries, ...

n, an unwilling listener whose response would be to martyr Adalbert. Legend says that the King of Poland Bolesław I ransomed back Adalbert's body by paying its weight in gold. The original balustered white-marble altar rail complements the white marble of the many-tiered

altar An altar is a table or platform for the presentation of religion, religious offerings, for sacrifices, or for other ritualistic purposes. Altars are found at shrines, temples, Church (building), churches, and other places of worship. They are use ...

behind and above it and serves the additional aesthetic purpose of visually reinforcing the line made by the

pilasters In architecture, a pilaster is both a load-bearing section of thickened wall or column integrated into a wall, and a purely decorative element in classical architecture which gives the appearance of a supporting column and articulates an ext ...

which demark the north wall. The altar rail also complements the original high, white marble

pulpit A pulpit is a raised stand for preachers in a Christian church. The origin of the word is the Latin ''pulpitum'' (platform or staging). The traditional pulpit is raised well above the surrounding floor for audibility and visibility, accesse ...

. Square and elaborately carved with large figures of the four evangelists on its corners and smaller figures of the six

prophet In religion, a prophet or prophetess is an individual who is regarded as being in contact with a divinity, divine being and is said to speak on behalf of that being, serving as an intermediary with humanity by delivering messages or teachings ...

s on its sides, it rises west of the

sanctuary A sanctuary, in its original meaning, is a sacred space, sacred place, such as a shrine, protected by ecclesiastical immunity. By the use of such places as a haven, by extension the term has come to be used for any place of safety. This seconda ...

against one of the ponderous beige-and-grey marble pillars with gold capitals that line the

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

on either side. The white- marble side altars have paintings of Our Lady and

Saint Joseph According to the canonical Gospels, Joseph (; ) was a 1st-century Jewish man of Nazareth who was married to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and was the legal father of Jesus. Joseph is venerated as Saint Joseph in the Catholic Church, Eastern O ...

respectively instead of the more customary statues. The original east

transept A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform ("cross-shaped") cruciform plan, churches, in particular within the Romanesque architecture, Romanesque a ...

marble

shrine A shrine ( "case or chest for books or papers"; Old French: ''escrin'' "box or case") is a sacred space">-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ...: ''escri ...

holding the Pietà (once matched by a similar shrine in the west transept) is still intact. The

mural A mural is any piece of Graphic arts, graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' ...

on the upper portion of the north wall above the sanctuary portrays on the left the wedding of Queen Jadwiga of Poland and Prince Jagiello of

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

and on the right the 1655 victory of Our Lady of Częstochowa when by the Virgin's intervention an army of 9,000 invading

Swedes Swedes (), or Swedish people, are an ethnic group native to Sweden, who share a common ancestry, Culture of Sweden, culture, History of Sweden, history, and Swedish language, language. They mostly inhabit Sweden and the other Nordic countries, ...

failed to take a

monastery A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of Monasticism, monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in Cenobitic monasticism, communities or alone (hermits). A monastery generally includes a ...

held by only 250 monks. The predominant muted orange-red tones of the mural are repeated in the present color of the

ambulatory The ambulatory ( 'walking place') is the covered passage around a cloister or the processional way around the east end of a cathedral or large church and behind the high altar. The first ambulatory was in France in the 11th century but by the 13t ...

wall and also in the ceiling coffers and panels of the

clerestory A clerestory ( ; , also clearstory, clearstorey, or overstorey; from Old French ''cler estor'') is a high section of wall that contains windows above eye-level. Its purpose is to admit light, fresh air, or both. Historically, a ''clerestory' ...

. Although these panels and coffers are painted in this solid color today, it is possible that they were originally intended for murals such as the large ones of St. Francis and St. Anthony in the west transept and the others of various subjects that have been completed in the panels around the main lower body of the church. The pews retain their period-authentic molasses-dark

varnish Varnish is a clear Transparency (optics), transparent hard protective coating or film. It is not to be confused with wood stain. It usually has a yellowish shade due to the manufacturing process and materials used, but it may also be pigmente ...

; both their finish and their classical broken-curve top ornamentation matches that of the original confessionals in the east

. On the south (or entrance) end of the church rises a spectacular two-story choir loft with curving ranges of organ pipes on either side and a

rose window Rose window is often used as a generic term applied to a circular window, but is especially used for those found in Gothic cathedrals and churches. The windows are divided into segments by stone mullions and tracery. The term ''rose window'' wa ...

of St. Cecilia in the center. The aisle floors are a handsome inlay of sections of red, black, and gray

terrazzo Terrazzo is a composite material, poured in place or precast, which is used for floor and wall treatments. It consists of chips of marble, quartz, granite, glass, or other suitable material, poured with a cementitious binder (for chemical bind ...

Alterations and losses

Several rows of pews have been removed from the back, truncating Schlacks's long processional aisle. The floor where the pews were removed has been patched with vinyl

tile Tiles are usually thin, square or rectangular coverings manufactured from hard-wearing material such as ceramic, Rock (geology), stone, metal, baked clay, or even glass. They are generally fixed in place in an array to cover roofs, floors, wal ...

that attempts to match the pattern and colors of the surrounding tan and black

floor. The original

chandeliers are gone. The original

brass Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, in proportions which can be varied to achieve different colours and mechanical, electrical, acoustic and chemical properties, but copper typically has the larger proportion, generally copper and zinc. I ...

communion rail is gone. The west transept shrine has been truncated to accommodate a new baptistry. A large polychrome

rood A rood or rood cross, sometimes known as a triumphal cross, is a cross or crucifix, especially the large crucifix set above the entrance to the chancel of a medieval church. Alternatively, it is a large sculpture or painting of the crucifixio ...

(crucifix) which may have originally hung in the sanctuary has been placed in the remaining portion of the west transept shrine to which has been added a false back to bring the surface out to meet the back of the crucifix.

Church in architecture books

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References

External links