St. Patrick's Catholic Church, Toledo Ohio
The steeple of St. Patrick's Church rises from the midst of a warehouse and low cost housing district on the near south side of Toledo. The Gothic structure is now virtually unused. Its parish has dwindled to less than fifty families. Monsignor Jerome E. Schmit remarked that the future of St. Patrick's was uncertain.
Reverend Edward Hannin, an Irish immigrant, came to Toledo in April, 1862 to establish a new parish. The cornerstone of the first St. Patrick's Church was laid in July, 1862. In 1874, Reverend Hannin constructed St, Patrick's Institute. The Institute contained dormitories, a gymnasium, and library, and was designed to keep the parish boys off the street. In 1892, the foundation for the new church was completed. The cornerstone was put in place in 1894, but the building was not completed until 1901. Although the Toledo Blade, on the occasion of the dedication, and local historians Claimed Hannin to be the chief architect, it is now certain that A. Druiding, a Chicago architect, designed the church.
St. Patrick's is an excellent example of late Victorian Gothic church architecture. It is also one of Toledo's oldest parishes, and an important landmark on the near South side of Toledo.
The church offers services on Sundays and Wednesdays. The Historic Church of St. Patrick
Building Description
St. Patrick's is a late 19th century sandstone in the vocabulary of the Gothic Revival. The three-part facade is centered by a large square tower with canted buttresses and a semi-rhomboidal spire.
The main entrance is larger and more deeply recessed than the flanking ones; all three support gables. An octagonal vestibule leads into the four-bay nave, the large transept and polygonal apse. Hip-roofed dormers both on the roof and nave give light to the pseudo clerestory of the interior. Tall red granite monolithic columns along the central aisle with its pair of flanking side aisles support the clerestory and suggest the true hall-church nature of the structure. In the apse are finely carved oaken reredos and a modern altar.
Shamrocks of St. Patrick are incorporated in the marble floor along the aisles. The ceiling is a simplified fan vault of plaster-lath construction suspended from roof-trusses.
