St. Rose Catholic Church Complex

About this property

St. Rose's Catholic Church (also known as "St. Rosa's Catholic Church") is a historic Catholic church in St. Rose, an unincorporated community in Marion Township, Mercer County, Ohio, United States. Catholics near the community of St. Rose began meeting for worship in 1837; they built a log church building in the following year, and in early 1842, they purchased land ultimately to be used for a cemetery and a larger church. In 1844, these individuals were erected into a separate parish, which was dedicated to St. Rose. At that time, the parish encompassed a significantly larger area than it does today; five other parishes — Nativity in Cassella, St. Sebastian in Sebastian, Precious Blood in Chickasaw, St. Aloysius in Carthagena, and Our Lady of Guadalupe in Montezuma — were partially or entirely formed from territory originally included in St. Rose parish. Mass was celebrated at the church sporadically for its first eight years; only in 1845, after several priests from the Congregation of the Precious Blood began serving St. Rose and several surrounding parishes, were the parishioners able to have regular services. By the 1850s, the log church building had become too small, so a replacement brick structure was constructed at a cost of $6,000 and consecrated in mid-1854. Measuring 42 feet (13 m) by 75 feet (23 m), it was periodically modernized; by 1907, it featured such improvements as acetylene lighting. However, this structure in turn was becoming too small by this time; four years later, a third church building was begun, and it was consecrated in September 1912. Today, St. Rose's remains an active parish of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. It is part of the Marion Catholic Community cluster, along with Precious Blood parish in Chickasaw, Nativity of the Blessed Virgin parish in Cassella, St. Sebastian parish in Sebastian, and St. John the Baptist parish in Maria Stein. The entire cluster is a part of the St. Marys Deanery. The parish owns three buildings located adjacent to each other: the church, a rectory, and a former one-room school. St. Rose's Church is a High Gothic Revival structure, three bays wide on the front and five bays long on the sides. Built in the shape of a Latin cross, the church is a single-story brick building; it rests on a foundation of blue Bedford limestone with a basement and is covered with a gabled roof of asphalt. Among its leading architectural elements is its octagonal steeple, topped with a louvered belfry. The two corners of the facade feature tall, thin windows and are topped with miniature square towers. Inside, the sanctuary is decorated with multiple white reredos and many statues; the interior is illuminated by light from lancet windows, one of each which is found in each of the side bays. Throughout the building, the architectural elements include high pointed arches. A small cemetery sits behind the church.

Location

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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