St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church 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 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 ...

near Capitol Square in downtown

Madison, Wisconsin Madison is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. It is the List of municipalities in Wisconsin by population, second-most populous city in the state, with a population of 269,840 at the 2020 Uni ...

. It was designed by one of Madison's pioneer architects and built in 1888 to serve the former

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...

of St. Patrick. In 1972, the church was designated a landmark by the Madison Landmarks Commission. 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 1982 for its architectural significance.

Architecture

St. Patrick's is a rectangular

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 ...

church marked by a 100-ft tower on the right side of the front facade. Fr. Knox, the first pastor, commissioned the design from local architect John Nader; Nader had also designed St. Mary's (later Holy Mother of Consolation) church in

Oregon, Wisconsin Oregon is a village in Dane County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 11,179 at the 2020 census. A suburb south of Madison, it is part of the Madison metropolitan area. The village is located mostly within the Town of Oregon. His ...

, where Knox had previously served. With The tower is topped with a narrow shingled dome, resting on eight small triangular pediments that link it to the octagonal wood-frame structure below it, each side of which is lit with an oculus. The foundation is built of local

sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

, whereas the superstructure is built of cream-colored brick with stone trim and decorative brickwork. Each bay, separated by plain pilasters with stone caps, features a round-arched window. The interior of the church has a plaster ceiling in a shallow, curved vault. The window bays are demarcated by half-vaults from the wall and ribs on the ceiling, connected with small

pendentive In architecture, a pendentive is a constructional device permitting the placing of a circular dome over a square room or of an elliptical dome over a rectangular room. The pendentives, which are triangular segments of a sphere, taper to point ...

s. The current interior was installed during the 1957 renovation, including the

predella In art a predella (plural predelle) is the lowest part of an altarpiece, sometimes forming a platform or step, and the painting or sculpture along it, at the bottom of an altarpiece, sometimes with a single much larger main scene above, but oft ...

and altar, communion rail, and parts of the side altars, done in three types of marble.

History

The parish was established to serve the largely Irish community living east of Capitol Square. St. Raphael's purchased two lots on east Main Street in 1886, and on May 24, 1888, the new parish of St. Patrick was formally established and took ownership of the land. Irish-born Fr. Patrick Knox was made pastor, and he set about the task of organizing the congregation and raising funds to build the new church, which was dedicated on

Saint Patrick's Day Saint Patrick's Day, or the Feast of Saint Patrick (), is a religious and cultural holiday held on 17 March, the traditional death date of Saint Patrick (), the foremost patron saint of Ireland. Saint Patrick's Day was made an official Chris ...

of 1889. Archbishop

Michael Heiss Michael Heiss (April 12, 1818 – March 26, 1890) was a Germany, German-born Catholic Church in the United States, American Catholic prelate who served as Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Archbishop of Milwaukee from 1881 to 1890. He prev ...

of the

Archdiocese of Milwaukee The Archdiocese of Milwaukee () is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or archdiocese, of the Catholic Church in southeast Wisconsin in the United States. The Archdiocese of Milwaukee is the Metropolis (religious jurisdiction), metropolitan s ...

was in attendance. By 1902 the parish needed more space for mass and expanded 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 ...

ten feet on each side. In 1907, a

Catholic school Catholic schools are Parochial school, parochial pre-primary, primary and secondary educational institutions administered in association with the Catholic Church. , the Catholic Church operates the world's largest parochial schools, religious, no ...

was opened, staffed by the

Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters The Congregation of the Most Holy Rosary of the Order of Preachers, better known as the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa, is an American religious institute of the Regular, or religious (Catholicism), religious, branch of the Third Order of St. Domi ...

. Although the church was renovated in 1957 and expanded its facilities in 1958, suburbanization, enrollment growth at the University of Wisconsin, and the growth of the state government were already depopulating the isthmus neighborhoods. The decline in parish and school rolls hastened with the opening of St. Peter's parish in 1967. In 1977, the school was closed and sold to the

Salvation Army The Salvation Army (TSA) is a Protestantism, Protestant Christian church and an international charitable organisation headquartered in London, England. It is aligned with the Wesleyan-Holiness movement. The organisation reports a worldwide m ...

, and the former convent converted into a religious education center, then a service center for

Catholic Charities USA Catholic Charities USA is the national voluntary membership organization for Catholic Charities agencies throughout the United States and its territories. Catholic Charities USA is a member of Caritas Internationalis, an international federatio ...

. By the 2000s, the

priest shortage In the years since World War II there has been a substantial reduction in the number of priests ''per capita'' in the Catholic Church, a phenomenon considered by many to constitute a "shortage" in the number of priests. From 1980 to 2012, the ratio ...

was making it difficult for the

Diocese of Madison The Diocese of Madison () is a Latin Church diocese in the southwestern part of Wisconsin in the United States. The diocese has approximately 167,000 Catholics in 102 parishes with 98 priests in active ministry. As of 2025, the bishop of Madison ...

to keep its churches staffed. After the old Saint Raphael's Cathedral was destroyed by arson in 2005, St. Patrick's, Holy Redeemer, and St. Raphael's were merged to form the new Cathedral Parish of St. Raphael. The merger of the three downtown parishes was announced in October 2007 and executed on July 1, 2008, part of the ongoing major realignment of parishes in the diocese.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Patrick's Roman Catholic Church, Madison, Wisconsin Churches in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Madison Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Wisconsin Churches in Madison, Wisconsin Romanesque Revival church buildings in Wisconsin Roman Catholic churches completed in 1889 National Register of Historic Places in Madison, Wisconsin Christian organizations established in 1888 Christian organizations disestablished in 2008 19th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in the United States 1888 establishments in Wisconsin 2008 disestablishments in Wisconsin