St. Boniface Roman Catholic Church was a Roman Catholic church located at 2356 Vermont Avenue in

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

. It was also known as St. Boniface-St. Vincent Roman Catholic Church. The church was designated a Michigan State Historic Site in 1983 and listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 1989, but was subsequently demolished in 1996. The church was removed from the NRHP in 2022.

History and significance

The German Catholic citizens of Detroit began moving to the west side in the 1860s, particularly along the Michigan Avenue corridor.Saint Boniface Roman Catholic Church
from the state of Michigan In 1867, Bishop Casper Borgess created St. Boniface parish to serve the German population on the west side. In 1873, a two-story, red brick

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

rectory building was built for the parish at a cost of $6,000. A stone church building was planned by the prominent local architect William M. Scott, and construction was completed in 1883 at a cost of $30,000. The parish was closed in 1989,Closed Parishes
from the Archdiocese of Detroit and the building was demolished in 1996.Roman Godzak
''Catholic Churches of Detroit,'' Arcadia Publishing, 2004, , p. 102

Description

St. Boniface Church was an eclectic example of

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 to ...

and

Ruskinian 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. Promo ...

architecture. It was built in a cruciform shape from red brick and cream-painted wood, and featured a high nave roof, steeply gabled stone entry arches, and a central pavilion with recessed round arches. The church had a square, louvered bell tower with an octagonal metal roof. The side walls were supported by heavy, stone-embellished buttresses. The rectory was a two-story

stone building, painted black. It had a modified hip-roof with cross-gabled dormers and a bracketed corniceline, an open gabled portico, and rectangular and round arch window enframements.

Gallery

File:St Boniface Church Detroit c1910.jpg, St. Boniface Roman Catholic Church, c. 1910 File:St Boniface School Detroit c1910.jpg, St. Boniface School, c. 1910 File:St Boniface Roman Catholic Church Detroit Michigan DEMOLISHED.jpg, Lot where St. Boniface Roman Catholic Church once stood

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Boniface Roman Catholic Church Roman Catholic churches completed in 1882 19th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in the United States Former Roman Catholic church buildings in Michigan Churches in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Michigan Demolished buildings and structures in Detroit Demolished churches in the United States Michigan State Historic Sites German-American culture in Detroit Buildings and structures demolished in 1992 National Register of Historic Places in Detroit