Fort Wayne City of Churches is made possible in part by grants from Vintage Archonics, an award winning architectural and engineering firm serving Fort Wayne since 1927.

Vintage Archonics has established a prominent position in the design of hospitals, industrial facilities and churches with over 90 church projects completed in just the last 15 years.

Vintage Arconics is proud to sponsor this program, highlighting Fort Waynes historic places of worship and the Helen P. VanArnam Foundation.

The church acts as a surrogate family to each of its members.

It offers comfort and warmth for all of life's events through the joy of baptism, marriage and the sorrow of death.

Like a family, it shields its members from the uncertainties of the world through moral challenges and social upheavals, through moments of hope and fear.

It is a history which, like life itself, has known dull days and other days when the love of God moved powerfully along the rivers and across the hills and plains of Indiana in the 1800s.

While military, political and economic forces were working to shape new settlements.

The role of the church completed the picture, creating a moral tone and social climate in Fort Wayne, which attracted new settlers from the eastern states and Western Europe into what was described by Bishop Luers as this wild Hoosierdom.

A lot of the churches were the early staging grounds for the temperance movement.

They were early staging grounds for women's rights.

A lot of the early church groups, if you will, the church women, had gotten together at potlucks and everything else to talk about voting, which became exceedingly important.

And certainly they finally got the right to right after World War One.

The churches in this area were very interested in not only preserving some the civil civilization that we've talked about, but they're also interested in feeding people and improving living conditions.

There used to be huge slums all through Fort Wayne that the churches were very active in cleaning up, and the early church organizations formed different nonprofit groups.

They really are the foundation of where groups like the United Way came from.

They came originally from a very religious organization, and they became non-denominational and part of the national organization.

At that point.

But the churches really are where our social services have come from and the governmental entities that work with us.

In June of 1852, Fort Wayne was described as the City of churches in an article of the Fort Wayne Times boasting about having 12 churches and 5000 inhabitants or one church to every 417 of its population.

Currently, Allen County is home to over 300 churches and a population of approximately 314,000 or one church to about 1047 people.

We have a lot of churches for the number of people that we have had here in Fort Wayne.

Language was a big part of it.

Certainly in the Lutheran and the Catholic religions, you had the English Lutheran Church and the German Lutheran Church, and the same with a lot of the Catholic churches too, and other religions throughout Fort Wayne.

But there were a lot of other customs, a lot of issues.

And where one came from, you might be Armenian and you want to have Armenian potluck at your church.

So I mean, not to belittle it, but that would be a good reason to split off.

You have a different cultural group.

You're trying to preserve some of that culture for your kids.

Most churches and synagogues established in Fort Wayne during the 19th century are flourishing today, possessing historic, architectural and social significance while contributing spiritually to their congregations in turn reaching into the community.

Join us as we look into some of these originating churches that coined the phrase Fort Wayne City of Churches.

The first denomination to send a clergyman to the people of Fort Wayne were the Protestants in 1821.

Fort Wayne was not considered to be an area of comfort at that time.

As a matter of fact, one Protestant pastor concluded there was no place that appeared to me so unpromising as Fort Wayne.

As time progressed, the Presbyterians were credited with many firsts in this unpromising area.

James Hannah organized the first Sunday school.

The First Presbyterian Church congregation was formally organized in 1831 and is Fort Wayne's oldest continuing congregation.

The first Church related school was organized by the Presbyterians.

This was also the first religious denomination to construct a church building in Fort Wayne.

In 1836, a small wood framed church was built on the south side of Berry Street.

It was the most dependable shelter for many religious groups struggling to form their own dwellings.

Even the county courthouse, after being judged unsafe in 1842, had to hold court in the First Presbyterian Church.

The Presbyterian Church instituted the First Temperance Society.

They were the first to support the abolition of slavery.

Some of its members were leaders in the new cause of moral reform, and they were the only local congregation to grant full voting privileges to women.

Clearly, this church was not here just to be religious under themselves.

They were here to help reform, change and improve the whole climate of the human community.

All these people were very interested in the progress of Fort Wayne, and a big piece of that for them was to make sure that religious institutions were in place.

In the late forties, after World War Two, there was a tendency for downtown churches to follow the growing population to the suburbs.

The first Presbyterian Church was in need of more space at that time, so they began plans to build a new structure with the help of some influential people in the community and in the congregation.

The current building was dedicated in 1956.

An architect from Philadelphia designed this Georgian colonial church, along with a resident architect, Dick Shoaf.

I asked Dick what he thought, what he thought it would cost to replace this building today.

And he said he said, I wouldn't even give you a figure.

But he said parts of this could never be replaced at any cost, particularly that some of the work here in the sanctuary.

But I think we're talking at least 20 to $25 million, probably to do it today.

Some artifacts are still here from the old church building at Washington and Clinton Street.

Right.

I think below where we're sitting right now is the memory chapel where we have some of the pews from the old church, the old lectern in the old pulpit, and the pictures of past ministers.

So some of us go down there and think about the old times, a consistent tradition in the First Presbyterian Church as well as many others.

Is the strong sense of worship as the center of church, family life strong preaching, strong education, and a real desire to be involved in the development of the community.

There were no parks in this neighborhood, no place for children to play.

There were no traffic lights between downtown and Swinney Park, so children were crossing the street with no traffic lights.

There needed to be an increase in quality.

The homes were becoming multifamily dwellings and there were a lot of slumlords in the area.

And so we thought perhaps the quality of life for people around our immediate neighborhood could be improved if we and the other churches in the area got involved.

As it turned out, eight churches and the YWCA across the street at that time got involved in the work and it just blossomed.

Here at this church, we have a twofold and we try to be all encompassing in our education for children.

On Sunday mornings, we have a time where the children are in a worship program that is called Young Children in Worship, and it follows the reformed order of worship.

And we meet in a special place.

It's a worship center, and there we hear the stories of God, and the children are allowed to respond to those stories during wandering time where there is no right or wrong answer.

But it is based on how they feel about the story.

We start with stories that are in the Old Testament and we follow through to the New Testament to what I call the Jesus stories, which are my personal favorites.

The hope is that within that time frame that they're in church school, that they will bond with the other children that are in the classroom with them and have a sense of community, as well as learning the stories.

As parents when you're raising your children, you only have them for such a short time.

But the hope is that then when you send them off that they will know that they're truly part of that community.

Part of those covenant people who belong to God and that that will be with them their whole life.

And eventually the missionary effort in Korea in the last century has been very successful.

Many Protestants in Korea are Presbyterian.

In the natural affinity for them when they come to this country is to seek out a Presbyterian base.

The First Presbyterian Church in Fort Wayne provides that base to a Korean congregation that is over 100 strong.

Every member is a member of the rest of the church.

Both English and Korean speaking belong to the same congregation.

However, because there is a language barrier, they have their own minister and they have their own worship service.

Probably 90% of those people still are very dependent on the Korean language.

The hope is that as their kids take up the English language as a first language, then integration would would proceed.

In the meantime, they provide for Korean people, not just in Fort Wayne, but from a very wide area, a base where some traditions are maintained, where people can understand each other, they can have a meal together every week.

And so it's very much a home base for them.

In the late sixties, the First Presbyterian Church continued to expand during that expansion, a space underneath a large dining hall caused a lot of discussion as to what should occupy that space.

There were two options a gymnasium or a theater.

The theater was completed and the first performance debuted in 1968 and still flourishes today, providing the community with a variety of stage plays.

I saw an ad in Art Search, which is the one ads for theater professionals about First Presbyterian Theater, and the ad was written to make it sound like a little church basement with folding chairs and not much of a space.

But it is a gorgeous 322 theater.

I mean, it's fully equipped with a great sound system, a great lighting system.

It's a beautiful space.

And I can't I could not count the number of people who have walked in the for the first time going, wow, this is actually a theater.

And we saw the theater not just as another community theater in Fort Wayne, but as a theater that would question values, would espouse values, would reinforce values would be we can do things in this theater that they can't do in other community theaters.

And it has to be a good production.

It can't be We can't hide behind the fact that we're we're good church people and therefore we mean well and we can get away with with something that doesn't doesn't have a quality to it.

Many people are surprised that we don't we don't do just religious pageantry.

We do playwrights from David Mamet to Christopher Durang, from Shakespeare to Shore to Ibsen, we do Major Dramatists.

Our emphasis is on doing literature that that entertains, but also has a meaning, has a way of affecting people's lives.

I knew that it was would be a wonderful canvas for me to practice my art, but I also knew that it was a place that has a reputation for doing serious, important work and I was I was very happy to be charged with carrying that tradition on.

The First Presbyterian Church remains in the downtown area to make life better for the people who have also chosen to stay in the inner city.

The church has made a commitment to maintain Fort Wayne as a quality city in the inner city as well as in the outlying area.

Some of us believe that the health of the inner city is important to the whole urban area and that we can't lose the inner city.

We need it all.

It was important to the early Calvinists that they were not here just to be religious unto themselves.

So it is with that kind of investment that the church is here with that kind of investment that it stayed here.

And and that's its investment for the future.

The historic lot where Barr and Madison Street meet is the property of St Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Congregation Missouri Synod The second oldest Lutheran church in Indiana and one of the oldest in the western part of our country.

This magnificent cathedral like building was erected and dedicated on September 15th, 1889.

It was Henry Rudisill that played a very active role in the establishment of this new congregation.

He was born in Pennsylvania of German descent, where he and his wife were members of a Lutheran congregation that came to Fort Wayne in 1829, at a time when the settlement numbered about 150 people, mostly French and Indians.

The Rudisills were the first German descendants and also the first two Lutherans.

They could have joined one of the already existing Protestant congregations in Fort Wayne, but they were Lutherans and wanted to remain Lutherans.

This congregation, which has always been a great congregation, I would say, of all the churches in Fort Wayne, this this church contributed more to the city and community of Fort Wayne than perhaps any other.

In the fifties, after the elevation of the Nickel Plate railroad tracks, many of the churches were abandoned, the downtown area, and I was a member of the the church council and then became chairman of the congregation.

When Pastor Berger suggested to my father, who was also active in the church and I and several others, that we needed to start buying up all the properties surrounding St Paul's over to Lafayette Street, over to Francis over to Lewis.

And so that became a vigorous ten year challenge.

And I did the legwork for it in buying up all the properties around here through what we called the Heritage Fund.

And as a result of raising the funds from our members, we're able to buy up all the older homes that were surrounding the church and thus be able to preserve the church.

But as people gradually moved away and further and further out, we still considered an important that we have a downtown presence, a presence really in the city to show how central the concept of church and worship and the word of God, how central they really need to be to the lives of people, even as the church is in a central location.

St Paul's is one of the finest examples of Gothic style architecture.

It bears the marks that are characteristic of this classic style.

Low pointed arches, the windows, the spires and pinnacles, and the floral decorations with its beautiful balcony, it seats about 1200 people.

Our steeple on the outside rises some 220 or 25 feet in the air.

On top of the steeple, of course, is a cross, which is about a little over six feet tall.

And that is intended to draw the eyes of the viewer toward the heavens and the gothic architecture in the church with the vaulted ceilings, with the pointed windows and so forth.

Again, was to help people to realize that this was not their their home forever, that their home was in heaven.

Our stained glass windows do a number of things.

They, first of all, point us to the scriptures, the word of God.

The point is to the suffering Savior.

The crown of thorns.

Also, tell us about Holy Communion.

So the main elements of our church, namely the word and the sacraments, are are reinforced through the use of stained glass windows.

Our church includes at the altar or really under the altar, The relief that was first designed, of course, by Da Vinci of the Last Supper.

And we are told that when this was first done by Da Vinci many years ago, he wanted to capture the moment when Jesus said, one of you will betray me.

And all of them began to pass.

Lord, is it I?

And that moment is captured in the Banshees famous painting.

And that is a very traditional artwork that has been found below the altars of many, many churches down through the years.

And we're very happy to have that as our focus as well.

St Paul's was ever cognizant of the importance of a parish school, both for the external and the internal growth of a Christian.

Congregates in St Paul's School is the oldest continually operating school in Fort Wayne as it was founded in 1837, when the church was established.

I was very pleased when I came back seven or eight years ago to see that, that, you know, the school was still going very strong and that because there have been many schools here in the downtown area that have not been able to maintain their programs.

And so I think in combination with the school and our willingness to always instruct our children, to instruct the children in the way of, um, uh, in the way that they should grow up and be committed Christians, I believe that that's really, you know, been a great, great benefit to this church.

We have felt over the years that it's very important that our children learn about God and what he has done.

And that, of course, is very important at a young age as well.

And we have consider this to be so important that we have operated our school for these many, many years in order to help our children, to give them a good start so that they can become productive Christian citizens in our land.

Martin Luther is spoke a great deal about the gift of music, and he made full use of it.

He used it to teach the truths of the church by giving it to children and people of all ages.

I think especially in the downtown churches, as one looks around, there are so many fine musicians, choral directors and organists especially.

They have come from fine music schools and from extensive backgrounds doing music to be in the city.

And I think one of the attractions is this support that church musicians have for each other, that I think they attend each other's concerts, that they they support each other in many ways.

I don't know how unusual this is nationwide, but as one looks around for my colleagues, for instance, in this city, there's wonderful support and encouragement of each other and a very high level of expertise in these other churches.

But it is also, for me, sometimes the the finest, happiest moments of my week to come together with the children, all coming from from lunch, from different emotional states, from different things that we're doing, and really be united in a singular purpose, even for that short hour that we're together to be able to lead.

This is just a wonderful privilege.

In fact, it's it's like a foretaste of heaven.

Heaven is going to be about making making music.

There's no doubt about it.

And we have an opportunity when we gather in this house, this glorious place, to to lift our voices and say back to God what he has given us by faith to to say, oh, so it is very important in my thinking and I can think of nothing.

I'd rather do.

In 1995 and 1997, the children's choirs made recordings of hymns and liturgy sung in St Paul's to be used as teaching tools around the world.

The two recordings have gone farther geographically than I ever imagined.

As I do conferences around the country, people now are coming up to me and saying, I've been using your recordings to teach my class hymns or my Sunday school class or my children.

My children can sing 50 hymns because they go to sleep every night with that CD playing.

I know that it is around the world.

I know that's in Japan and Finland and Russia and that people are singing along in their own languages with those recordings.

I don't think the children have a clue.

The influence that their recordings have had.

As difficult and as arduous as those recording sessions were, for them to keep their energy and their attention with the project, it is something that I feel a lot of personal satisfaction about that the children and I were able to put that together.

As with many of the churches in Fort Wayne, St Paul's opened its arms to those in need.

With such programs as the Lutheran World Relief Missionary Program, which reaches out to every corner of the world.

You know, when you go to see these people, just give you an example.

Like in India, at a feeding station of Lutheran World Relief, 750 children every day came to that feeding station.

They had no food at home.

We had to be careful to prepare the food and feed the people, the children, these children there because if you would give grain or flour or something for them to take home so often it would get into the black market, you know?

Well, there were those children I'll never forget.

They came with big banana leaves, you know, That was the plate.

And they came into through the kitchen there and they made a mean glass of mush, that's all.

Sometimes the government, our government provided some of the cheeses they buy up from the farmers.

You know, sometimes a little hunk of cheese.

And there you'd see those children just just gobble away.

And they were emaciated looking.

Anyway.

And they always had those big eyes.

It was almost sorry.

But anyway, that was a great thing.

But, oh, the challenges were great.

And of course, as long as there are positions, but I knew I was doing the Lord's work, I was told that the people of Zion decided to build their church steeple a few feet taller than St Paul's steeple.

So we've had that kind of a friendly rivalry ever since.

But it goes back a long, long time.

Well, Zion Steeple is 211 feet tall.

Now, no doubt if you put a tape measure to St Paul's steeple, it would in fact be taller.

However, Zion is built on a little higher elevation, in fact.

So Zion, in fact, does have the tallest steeple, we believe, in town, certainly among the Lutherans.

It's kind of a funny story that has gone on here for years and years, but the story is among some of the old timers that when they were building Zion, they actually had the architect stretch the plans a bit so they could make that height just out to St Paul's a little bit.

And it was done on the sly.

In the late 1800s to pastors from St Paul's Lutheran felt it necessary to add to the number of Lutheran schools and congregations in Fort Wayne.

One particular area was the booming suburb of Hanna and Creighton Streets.

St Paul's purchased six lots where 60 families south of the Pennsylvania railroad were elected to form Zion Lutheran Church.

The building was dedicated in 1891 for the congregation that was formed in 1883.

It's similar, very similar to St Paul's, and you go into St Paul's and take a look around Zion and sort of the little sister with a light turned on, a light of color on, I think for the people who are longtime members of Zion have been at Zion, are immediately struck by the beautiful rear doors in the front of the church.

The four evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke and St John are standing in front the four writers of the Gospels.

Jesus is standing higher above them, inviting all who are weary and heavy Laden.

Come and I will give you rest.

And I kind of like the way Jesus.

His arms are outstretched right over the baptismal font and then pointing to the pulpit as well, and then also with the altar underneath.

Excellent.

Is the mode of operation at Zion Lutheran Church, Excellence in worship, in education, in benevolence and excellent and carrying on the tradition of Lutheran music in its music, education and choral performance?

We've always been really, really fortunate to have a great music program, great choirs.

The Lutheran music tradition is probably the richest of any denomination I know of.

There are people here in choir who like to have something done well.

I'm very, very proud of the people in this choir.

They they they are listening to me and they are they sing extraordinarily well.

They are picking up rather large pieces of music that one does not expect the church choir to to do, particularly a volunteer choir to sing.

And they are singing it very well.

And I'm very, very pleased about that.

There are some who come because it's sort of a social thing, you know, it's becoming a very dynamic social group.

These people are very good to each other.

It gives voice, I think, to the soul, really.

I mean, I, I find it very difficult to, you know, to sing certain hymns and certain choral pieces without getting emotional.

You know, it's probably to me, maybe the purest form of worship that there is.

So even back to biblical times, I mean, the Psalms were a lot of people think written to be set to music and the church continues that tradition.

Even today, the issue of race has not been easy for Zion over these many years, and it continues to be a challenge.

However, the people of Zion look at it as a tremendous opportunity.

It's an opportunity to reach out to a population where Lutheranism has not been in the past.

It's kind of interesting.

We've got people from out in the suburbs who are white members who are regularly asked by their neighbors, Why do you go down to that black neighborhood of that black church to go to church?

And by the same token, we have black members who are regularly asked by their black friends, Where do you go to that white man's church?

There are people in Fort Wayne who I think are afraid to come to hand in Creighton, even during the daytime, which I think is too bad.

It's really a misperception.

We've never had any problems here that people in other parts of town don't have.

I prefer to look at our location as rather a blessing than a problem.

The civil rights activities in the sixties and the conflicts that came with it brought challenging times.

There were race riots even in Fort Wayne along Pontiac Street.

As I recall, Zion was the First Lutheran Church in town to integrate, however, and that began to happen in the late fifties.

Already we still have some of our dear black members who are who came into Zion already at that time.

A lot of people have some negative views of the south east side is certainly where we sit.

I mean, it's a fact most people would think that Zion's probably in the most difficult area of the entire city, and frankly, we like it that way.

This is where God has put us.

Father John Delaney of St Peter's Catholic and Pastor Harrison of Zion Lutheran combined efforts to tackle the deteriorating neighborhood around them.

Pastor Harrison like to say they began rattling cages.

They started bothering everybody they could think of the mayor's office, city councilman, bankers, lawyers and many other great Fort Wayne citizens who saw the potential to do something good in this challenged area.

The goal is to move on to adjacent neighborhoods to bring about some positive renewal throughout the city.

And we have now, as of this day, taken down.

We're getting close to 30 vacant, dilapidated buildings vacant.

And in fact, I think we've only moved one family in this whole process.

So you can imagine that number of vacant buildings within a two block radius of Zion Lutheran Church at Hammond, Creighton were a great attraction for all kinds of negative activity and just decline in general.

Well, a plan came together with the help of Tom Kane from the city, city planners and many others, and we decided that we would attempt to build 27 or 25 new homes, rehabilitate a number of homes.

We began to go to work on it, and the Lord blessed us with individuals.

I tell you, it has been my greatest joy to be able to go in and be the catalyst to knock down a terribly dilapidated building that needs to go and watch the neighbors.

Property values double overnight.

In many respects, Zion is weak.

We don't have the huge membership we had in the sixties.

We don't have any doctors or lawyers as members of this parish.

And many of the people who moved from the area and went to the suburbs, as is the normal course of life, many of the people who replace them are people who are not.

People have a lot of power, not people who have money.

And so in many respects, Zion is a profoundly weak parish and nevertheless, precisely in our weakness.

It's like Paul says, when I am weak, that I am strong.

It's precisely in this weakness, inter-racial situation and which I many would regard as a weakness.

I regard as a great strength that these people know, finally, that there are certain things, certain basic things in the faith, Christ, baptism, Holy supper, being absolved of your sins, preaching those things are the basis of everything.

And they treasure them, they treasure them.

And I guess I regard it as the greatest privilege of my life to be a pastor here.

Shortly after St Paul's Lutheran was founded, it became apparent to Henry Rudisill that this church was a German Lutheran church.

The pastors and the people spoke German.

Mr. Rudisill felt that the English language, the up and coming thing in Fort Wayne and decided to found another church in April of 1846, Trinity English Lutheran Church was formed using the word English to assure people that it was a church where the English language was used.

They purchased their first building on East Berry Street from the Presbyterians.

The current Gothic building was dedicated in 1925, while the church was founded in 1846 by Henry Rudisill and 16 others who left the German Lutheran congregation, which Rudisill had helped to found a few years earlier because they wanted an English speaking congregation.

The other the other Lutheran congregation was German speaking, and they were primarily motivated by the interest in having a congregation where their children could grow up in the language of the land.

Trinity English has had an exceptional in having only three pastors since 1868.

Samuel Wagenhals, from 1868 to 1920.

Paul Krauss 1920 to 1967 and Richard Frazier from 1967.

This able leadership has gone on to influence not only the church at large, but also the history of Fort Wayne.

Dr. Wagenhals, was very strong believer in good government.

He wasn't interested in politics, but he was interested in good government.

One of the movements he was interested in supported was municipally owned utilities, and he was one of the people responsible for the fact that we had a city owned light company.

And in the history that I wrote, I reproduced a large newspaper article about a suit that he filed in his own name to prevent the city of Fort Wayne from giving away the rights to a private utility company that would have prevented the formation of a municipal utility.

Dr. Krauss was one of the founders of what was then the community chest, now the United Way, the Associated Churches.

He was very active and very much a leader in the community, and Pastor Frazier has continued on with that.

Pastor Frazier was one of the founders of the West Central Neighborhood Ministry, Vincent House, very active in Associated Churches, realizing that we might not have too many African Americans who would be members.

We aligned with Union Baptist Church with a pulpit and choir exchange and what we call living room dialogs.

After the Los Angeles riots, especially so that there could be opportunity for a white and black to sit down and really share where they feel.

But those are those are channels by which people can sit down and and share together that wouldn't normally come together.

Do they share or even talk to each other?

And I think those are positive things.

And I think my preaching has been a lot better since I preach.

And every white pastor should have an opportunity to preach in a black church.

It's a different experience.

In 1956, a young Richard Frazier accepted an associate position with Primary focus on youth ministry at Trinity English.

The youth ministry at the time was not as active as it had been in the past.

With the help of many members of the congregation and the youth program, Pastor Frazier's efforts to build the youth ministry were very successful.

The current youth program, named in Pastor Frazier's honor, was built on the foundation of his efforts and continues to provide several different services educational and recreational programs led by Christian professionals.

That was in the beginning days of of rock and roll and high school dances, and we just had some hugely successful events.

I mean, regularly.

I can't remember what night of the week it was.

That was before my time in the congregation.

But the kids would line up in a long line outside of the youth center to get in.

There were hugely popular.

And so he's always been connected with the youth ministry, and that's the reason that our youth center is is named in his honor.

One of the most memorable philanthropists in the history of Trinity English was JB Franke.

He was a prominent businessman associated with Perfection Biscuit Company and had many other business interests.

He was very active in the congregation and in the Lutheran Seminary in Chicago.

His generosity was not limited to the church or related organizations.

He donated a tract of land to the city which became Franke Park because of his love for music.

He wanted the finest instrument installed in the new church building.

When the church budget would not support his choice, he simply said, I'll pay for it.

Interesting story about the organ when they were designing the church.

J.B. Franke was a great music lover and he was determined to have the best organ that we could find.

And the Dr. Krauss and others thought that the organ that he proposed was too expensive, that that could we couldn't afford to put that into the church.

So J.B. Franke then offered to pay for the organ, which he did.

And that's the reason we have this wonderful eolian organ.

The sad thing is that within less than a month after this church was dedicated in December of 25, he died an automobile accident in early January of 1926.

One of the most interesting things that I found in my research for the history was a whole edition of an industry publication relating to the banking industry That was a complete memorial edition to JB Franke, and it was a wonderful source of material about him and showed the respect that he had in his industry.

In addition to this community, Dr. Krauss and JB Franke shared an appreciation for fine craftsmanship and architecture and art.

When the current building was in the planning stages, they engaged the leading neo-Gothic architect from the 19th and early 20th century, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue.

He has many other well-known works, many of them churches.

He designed the Riverside Church on the Upper West Side of New York St Thomas Church and St Bartholomew's Church in Manhattan.

He designed the West Point Chapel, the Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago, the Nebraska state capital.

The Los Angeles Public Library, which has just undergone a complete restoration in the last few years and has received much acclaim as a result of his restoration.

In keeping with the establishment of fine artistry, the stained glass artist who created the windows in the church were Wright Goodhue and R. Toland Wright each having substantial reputations in their work.

Wright Goodhue designed these some of these windows, including the window at the rear of the church when he was only 20 years old.

He died when he was 26, and he was widely regarded as a genius of stained glass work and R. Toland Wright was also a very highly regarded stained glass artist.

He did the windows up here above the chancel, the stonework.

You'll see these poor bells here in the transept, and there's a stone sculpture on the outside of the church were done by an artist by the name of Lee Lowery, who was also very well known for that kind of work.

Among his designs would be the statuary around the main entrance of Saint John, the Divine Cathedral in New York, and vario The rarer dose, which is over the altar, was designed by a man by the name of Lee Woodward Ziegler, who was a well-known muralist of the day, but they were all prominent artists in their own right.

Perhaps a reminder of Trinity's humble beginnings is the bell, which resided in the original building purchased from the Presbyterians.

Well, our church bell is the oldest church bell in Allen County.

It was in the Presbyterian Church, which we bought in 1846.

When the congregation was founded.

In 1846, they bought a small white frame church from the First Presbyterian Church.

It was located just east of the Historical Museum, the Old City Hall, and that church was built in 1837, and they left the bell.

And so when we moved then into a second church and then into this one, we brought the bell with us.

So and the bell still rings on Sunday, and it's been ringing in.

Allen County since 1837.

Still sounds pretty good, too.

A chapel was added and dedicated to Trinity in 1956, and one of the outstanding artistic features is a mural entitled Christ and the Children of Men.

The mural was commissioned by dedicated congregation members Mr. and Mrs. Carl Suedhoff off in memory of their son Thomas Lau Suedhoff who was killed in World War Two.

The painter was Austin Purvis, who was known for his mosaics, murals and frescoes in American churches and public buildings.

And Mr. Rudolph Senior was a very important member of the congregation and contributed two of our most enduring traditions.

He was the person that thought of and started the church bulletin Sunday church bulletin in 1921, and he was the person who thought of and started the parish visitor, our parish newspaper in 1931, the Carlson, our organist, Choirmaster Emeritus, who was here at the time, wrote a very interesting narrative for me in the book.

He was here when a mural was being painted, and in fact, he modeled one of the figures for one of the figures in the mural.

Rosemary and Dick Nickels are they are they wedding couple in the in the picture.

And if you look at there's a brooch on the lady at the left of the mural.

She has a brooch.

And on the brooch are the initials AP.

The artist put his initials on the lady's brooch and all the eggs that Austin Purvis went through while he created the paint to paint the mural apparently had curtains and cartons of eggs that he went through when he while he created the egg tempera paint to complete the mural.

Trinity is proud of its many traditions and the outstanding activity of the congregation over the years.

One of the first drama ministries was established in 1922 with the Trinity English Lutheran Church plays, which has grown to become a very important part of the life of the congregation, a music ministry complete with various choirs and education.

The current attendance in the choirs has been the largest since the fifties and sixties, which was the heyday of downtown congregations in Fort Wayne.

Also, the rich heritage in exquisite symbolic needlework is dedicated to the memory of Helen Hitchcock Krauss the wife of Dr. Krauss, who for 43 years brought the Trinity Church into its present Christian impact upon the community.

These fine fabrics that enrich the worship at Trinity English Lutheran symbolized the key figures and events of Christian Donne, as well as the devotion of the church members who produced them All.

Traditions established within this Trinity English Church not only influences its congregation, but also, just as importantly, is a strong influence in our community.

I think it's important as a beautiful piece of artwork, just as you would if you had any other beautiful piece of artwork, you'd want to preserve it.

But I think the most important reason is because of the contribution that the life of the congregation has made to the community.

And of course, perhaps first and foremost as a place of worship for the people who come here, what we call the family of Trinity, and create a community in which they feel welcome, in which they feel comfortable with worship and with their participation in the life of the congregation.

But I think that we offer such a wide variety of opportunities for children and the enrichment.

Our drama ministry and music ministry and high schoolers that those are the things that keep people coming like ministries.

The social climate evolved with times.

The church has had a large effect on the political and social growth here in Fort Wayne and how to handle those changes.

Certainly in the Fort Wayne area and Allen County, there was not a large community of African-Americans until after the Civil War.

There was always a small community here, but the churches at that time weren't all that involved with the racism issues in the African African-American community, and they weren't all that involved in some of the Indiana laws where if you were African-American, you had to post bond to live in Indiana.

So the idea was that the freed slaves or the underground Railroad would come through Indiana, but would end in Michigan or another state.

They didn't encourage people of color to live here in the Fort Wayne or the Indiana region.

Certainly after the war, that all changed.

And a lot of the early churches realized that people coming up, especially from the war torn areas of the South, killed without any money, without any sort of way of making a living, eating usually limited education in the church societies were some of the first to help educate these individuals and make sure they had enough medical care and food to eat.

And then as we talk about churches splintering into smaller, smaller groups and more specialized groups, as the African-American community grew, then we start finding we have African-American churches being formed, especially Methodist.

But a lot of other religions, too.

And those become, again, the social centers of their community and still are to this date.

They're probably even more of the centers of their community than some of the more of the Ang Indiana's exclusionary black laws enacted in 1851, discouraged African-Americans from settling in the area.

By 1860, the black population of Allen County was only 63 out of a population of 29,300.

It was not until after the Civil War in 1871 that the African Methodist Episcopal Church of Fort Wayne would be able to construct a place of worship.

Turner Chapel was named after Henry McNeal, an African Methodist Episcopal bishop in Georgia, and the first black chaplain for the United States military.

The congregation was formerly organized on December 12, 1872, the current Turner Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Jefferson Boulevard was constructed in 1875.

We were the first church of color in the city, and that has other people of color migrated here.

This church remained in the forefront and made try to make a difference in in the city for the African-American populace.

Even today, you know we've tried to remain active in, you know, civil rights and other types of things.

The difference now, though, it doesn't matter whether you're African-American, if you if we believe that you have in need of our help, we help whoever we possibly can.

But the church has remained on the cutting edge of change for the 150 years being in its infancy the way it started.

And then as the years unfolded, we've always been in the forefront of all the traditions happening behind the doors of Turner Chapel, the Children's Services.

We stand out among them.

When the children come to the altar for the altar call, it's just I just enjoy it so much.

Seeing the little ones come down the aisle and come to the altar in kneel, and then the pastor gives our someone else to give a little tell a little story about the Bible and then pastor of the last man who wants to pray this morning.

Then they they prayed the Lord's Prayer.

And it's just beautiful to hear the little children pray, because sometimes you think your pastor mentioned the other Sunday was funny.

You said, if I ask of the officers to pray, I don't know.

It might be kind of a shock to them because everybody doesn't want to pray in public.

So it but it is is something to see.

Those little ones just so interested they just bubble.

When International Harvester closed back in the eighties, one of the congregation couples took it upon themselves to come up with a program to help those that were out of work and they started giving away bags of food over the years, the church has been the mainstay with giving funds to further that outreach.

Today, we probably service 50 to 60 people on Fridays with a bag of food and not only for dry goods, but we also give out frozen bags with a couple of meals and a frozen bag.

And and then at Thanksgiving and Christmas, we give away baskets.

You could look in the face of those people who are putting the bags together in the boxes and you see in their faces that sense that I know that what I'm doing means something.

So we really make an effort to do what we can to help those who are less fortunate, because recognizing with the cuts in welfare, we've noticed an increase in the number of people that we get.

The challenge is, is raising enough funds to do it.

The congregation of Turner Chapel is currently preparing for their 150th celebration, reminding them and the community that the hard work and struggle in developing Turner Chapel has provided strong leadership down through the years.

This determination cultivated a dedicated and strong congregation who proudly contributes to those in need in this community.

That Scripture Jesus said on this rock, I build my church and I believe that if we hold true to that and have faith in the church will continue.

God, God always makes a way and the church will continue.

There was an early bishop in Illinois who said that Indiana was forever lost to the church because it was so wild and so uncultivated, and the Episcopal Church would never grow here.

The first Episcopal bishop came to Fort Wayne in 1837.

Bishop Jackson Kemper believed strongly the church could indeed prosper.

He thought that the town was growing and that he would get an Episcopal church going, eventually.

The church was in limbo for a number of years until about 1844, when Peter Bailey, a hardware merchant from New York, came here.

He had attended Trinity Church in New York on Wall Street and was amazed that there was no Episcopal Church in Fort Wayne.

He found a number of people and met in the courthouse conducting lay readings using the Book of Common Prayer.

They informed Bishop Kemper that they'd like to start an Episcopal church.

So they formed a vestry and Trinity Episcopal Church formed in May of 1844.

They took the name Trinity from Trinity Wall Street, where Peter Bailey had previously attended.

They attracted English emigrants and Canadians, people who had been Episcopalians in the East.

They enjoyed also the fact that the church was not overly doctrinal and it was not overly punitive.

Some churches in town measured their members very closely monitored everything, and if a member stepped out of line, they were punished or they were forced.

Apologize.

Episcopal Church didn't do that.

They weren't punishing people there.

It was sort of a looser type of organization.

And that appealed to some people.

In 1848, the church was having a hard time raising money.

And the rector of that time suggested renting pews.

This was a time honored tradition carried over from the east.

The idea was that each pew was purchased by a congregation member.

The proceeds going on to the church.

Here's a wonderful story that an old parishioner told me.

In the early 1900s.

A lady came.

She was a newcomer and she sat in a pew and oh, it was Mrs. Shriaks pew.

And Mrs. Shriak was this social maven.

And she said, came up to and said, You are sitting in my pew.

I bought it.

I paid for it, and it's mine.

And.

And our rector at the time, my father, Averil, thought that was terrible.

He said that people should be able to sit wherever they want.

And.

So in 1912, he reformed the system to the envelope pledge system, which is what we still have today.

The women have had a very integral role in the history of Trinity in the earliest times.

They would come up with various ways to entertain.

So clothes and bake items to sell at church fairs and so on, all to raise money to help maintain Trinity Episcopal.

One time they had what was called a camera lucida was sort of like an early form of slide projector where there is actually a candle in there and they had views of ruins and Rome and Paris and so forth.

And they projected this on the wall.

And this drew a lot of people who had never seen a camera lucida before.

And women were very much involved with organizing this.

There was a parishioner by the name of Franklin Randall, who was the mayor of Fort Wayne, and he had a very large personal library in his house that had books that went back to the 12th century.

He had mounted animals.

He had ancient coins.

He had pieces of Roman ruins.

All kinds of unusual things.

And the women persuaded him to lend these items to one of their fairs so that people could come in and go through what was almost like a museum of oddities, like a P.T.

Barnum show.

But this money that they were raising from these fairs helped to fund our building, helped to fund decorations.

In the late 1800s, women were the principal agency for missionary outreach and the Episcopal Church.

And they sent money to four four different missionary causes.

They raised goods that were sent out to the Indians and to different groups in the West.

And so it was a very vital part of the Ministry of Trinity.

The church traditionally has been a part of growing a family, while Trinity and society has change with the times.

The church still brings out a strong sense of love and loyalty among the members and they're devoted to the church and its outreach to the community.

Just being part of downtown Fort Wayne.

We want to be in downtown Fort Wayne because we support Fort Wayne.

We support the West Central Neighborhood Ministry.

We're supportive of the food bank.

We support outreach to local people in this neighborhood.

So Trinity will always be here in the downtown Fort Wayne area.

I've heard psychologists and psychiatrists often say and priests, ministers say that, you know, when when when we're counseling someone, we don't really say a whole lot.

We primarily listen.

And this is what Steve administered is primarily listen and try to encourage the person to share to get their feelings out.

If they feel guilty, then talk about their feelings.

They're feeling anger.

Even if they're feeling anger at God, talk about it and don't, you know, don't sit there and feel guilty about it, but try to get them to air their feelings.

And in this way, over a period of time, they can deal with their own feelings instead of suppressing them and and eventually get through their crisis.

The current church is a typical Gothic revival design.

It has a square tower with an octagonal spire.

There is split faced sandstone for the walls with limestone trim.

They laid the cornerstone in May of 1865.

It was a month after Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated, and they put a newspaper account of Lincoln's assassination in the cornerstone along with a prayer book and an Indian head penny.

And there was a big ceremony and Bishop Kemper, who by this time was no longer a bishop, came back and gave an oration here on Berry St. And there was a big crowd and the church was dedicated.

The windows are an extraordinary part of Trinity Episcopal Church.

There are panes of colored glass that are painted over with little designs and figures that look like 19th century woodcuts.

These windows, along with other artifacts like the pulpit and the altar, are what helped to create the atmosphere of the church.

There are scenes from the Bible.

There are different symbols of different things that meant eternal life or spirituality that we have lilies of the valley, we have baptismal fonts.

We have drapes that are symbolic, symbolic of the Eucharist, scenes of Jesus with the children saying, Let the little children come unto me, which is sort of a the whole window is a unified theme about Christian education.

There's another one with a figure of a woman at prayer, and it says, Our father, which is a prayer window.

There's another one with the Archangel Michael leading people up to heaven.

And that window actually what used to be right near the organ console.

And there was a belief that church musicians and church organists would be personally conducted into heaven by the angel Michael.

And so there was kind of a humorous tie in to have that window right next to the organ.

The pulpit is a memorial to Isaac DeGraff, Nelson and his wife, Elizabeth Rockhill And you'll notice that in West Central we have the streets, Rockhill and Nelson, and it's from that family.

And it was installed in the 1890s, the marble altar, which you'll find at the very back, was installed in 1873.

And it was very controversial at the time.

Prior to that time, we had what was called a holy table.

It was a small wooden table that was kept in the middle of the chancel.

And as the church was becoming more high church, that is more Anglo Catholic.

There was a movement among those churches to install marble altars because communion was becoming more important.

It was being offered more frequently and the rector, the time a man named Colin Campbell Tate, really wanted to have a marble altar.

So he persuaded one of the parishioners, a lady named Lavina Ewing Bond, to donate the altar to the church.

And people thought that it was too Catholic, becoming too much like the Catholics and not enough Protestants.

And that was sort of this ideological battle, I think, between the two groups.

But it was eventually very much accepted.

And now a venerable part of the church.

When the church was founded in 1844, Trinity did not have the services of a priest.

So the liturgies were lay led and there were two men who had alternate Lucian Ferry and Peter Bailey.

They were the founders of the church and each had their own favorite hymn.

So when Peter Bailey would lead the service, they would sing his favorite hymn and then the next week they would sing Lucian Ferry's favorite hymn.

So as far as we know, they had a two hymn repertoire.

By the early 1900s, they began to hire an organist.

They hired an audience by the name of Fred Church, who was a very innovative musician who really recruited young boys to be in our choir.

And he paid them $0.10 a week to to sing in our choir.

And he recruited them from other denominations and they would come by streetcar sometimes he'd send out a taxi to pick them up on Sunday mornings and they would come and then they would earn their dime.

Then they would run off to Coney Island afterwards for for a snack.

But the choir became a much more important part of Trinity at that time.

And Fred Church stayed with us for almost 20 years.

Fred was the one who really brought the choir of men and boys to prominence, and it was a very highly regarded organization in this town.

And they would put on performances not only within the parish but outside of the church as a means of raising money for the boys.

And we still have some some gentleman who remember those days who had been in Fred Church's boy choir, fond memories of him as a person.

And Fred would take them up to Lake James in the summer.

They'd have a week of camp, which for the boys then was really a significant event that they always looked forward to.

I should say to that Fred did start at the Saint Cecilia's choir, which was for women and this and in the forties when the boys choir was in decline, then they went to the mixed choir of men and women.

So the saints you see this choir in some respects has has lived on well, former choir member in the twenties by the name of Harriet Parish.

Before she died, she wrote an essay talking about her experiences in the choir and many of them are really precious.

One I'd love to share is about Christmas, when both Trinity Episcopal and First Presbyterian Churches had their own performances of Handel's Messiah and critics from the newspapers went to both performances and compared them.

And in the words of of Harriet, she claims that, well, according to the critics, the First Presbyterians rendition was more musical and artistically correct.

But Trinity's was more moving and spiritual, and both were mortally offended.

This church building is the third oldest in Fort Wayne, and it's ia beautiful building.

And people are devoted to it.

They're devoted to the the cosmopolitan nature of a congregation.

We have people from all walks of life here, different traditions, conservatives, liberals, people from different sexual orientations.

They all come to this church and we all need to gather at the Lord's table.

And that's very much part of that.

And we've been a Christian witness in Fort Wayne 160 years.

The reality of the Depression was affecting the financial concerns of the most precious blood church.

As a result, a group of parishioners were seeking a way to raise money for the parish.

It was decided to explore the possibility of installing bowling alleys in the basement of the school.

The decision proved to be very successful because of the German heritage involved in the parish.

One of the things the German people liked to do was to bowl and drink beer, and those two items fit just perfect in this situation.

So some of the people of the parish very some noted people of early Fort Wayne, but their time and talents and got them involved established the lanes and they've been going ever since 1932.

And when I was a young boy, we used to set pins there at $0.03 a line.

That means that you got about $0.60 a night for working or 60 lines or 30 where you used to have to pick up your pins, put them in in these racks, and then you had to slam the rack down by hand.

Nowadays, as you know, you don't have guys who do that.

But we did that.

Then we did it in my Children did it.

So it was kind of a hard work.

On February 12th, 1895, Bishop Rademacher assigned the northwest area of Fort Wayne to the Fathers of the Society of the Most Precious Blood.

Nine lots of land were purchased along the length of Fourth Street between Barthold and Andrews Streets.

On October 12th, 1897, the new congregation came together in the Bloomingdale neighborhood.

I find it comparative compared other churches I've been in.

The environment here is a lot better.

I find it very comfortable to celebrate liturgy here.

It's very conducive, and that's partly the furniture, but it's also part of the congregation.

When I got here, I don't know what I said to break the ice, but they laughed at that first laugh and I got it.

And it was really it really made me comfortable.

When I come up the aisle on Sunday, I give five to every every kid under the age of eight.

You know, they look for that.

They're always working their way to the outside of you.

You know, I come up, they give me a crack and I start that and I encourage that.

The kids bring their parents to church.

This this parish has roots, deep roots.

And I'm not even on the tip of the iceberg.

I've been here affiliated.

I'm going on 20 years.

And there have been there are people here that are 70, 80 years old and have life members that never gone anywhere else.

This is their neighborhood.

This is their parish.

I mean, it's just like they're rock solid entrenched here.

You know, there's over in the school, there's there's fourth, there's fourth and fifth generations of kids going through that school.

It's unbelievable.

And and it's not just one or two families.

So there's a sense of ownership and pride in the school and in the church, the neighborhood.

We're a poor we're not a destitute neighborhood, certainly, but we're not a rich neighborhood either.

But, you know, I'm proud to be here.

You know, I'm glad to be associated with this parish service people here.

I see this is my mother church.

And I've identified with the church a beautiful crucifix up there.

You see that crucifix up there hanging that was bought by my mother in memory of my father's death.

That was a to him, one of these windows back there was supported refurbishing by my family, our family.

So it's our church.

The Sisters of Precious Blood, provided the necessary tools in education.

When the Precious Blood school opened in September of 1898, these sisters have shaped the hearts, minds and lives of countless children and their families.

One of the reasons that I really wanted to be at Precious Blood is because of the tradition.

This is a church and a school just steeped in tradition.

But yet we're not afraid to be open and welcoming of other things and new ideas.

And one of those ideas is the Guardian Angel program, and this is the first year that we've had it at Precious Blood School and through the generosity of unnamed benefactors, scholarships are offered to children to come to precious blood.

And we have 40 students this year on the Guardian Angel Scholarships.

It is just the most important time of my week when we bring, the children over for worship.

So on Tuesday mornings we have a mass and the children prepare the mass.

They sing the songs, they write the prayers.

And for me that is the highlight of my week.

Upon entering A Most Precious Blood service on Sunday morning, you can expect to hear the spoken word of the liturgy.

However, the music director's goal is to enhance the liturgy with the music.

My job is is to lead prayer.

Music ought to be prayer, and it ought to lead people to a place where they can pray and the things that I choose to do, the songs that I choose, ought to help facilitate that.

And you have to be conscious that, you know, what I'm doing here is not just for me, this is for the Lord.

It's just like a performance.

And in the sense that you can't do this without an audience something happens when the audience is there.

It's at one level when you practice, it's another level when they're there in something that's that intangible that that they communicate back.

Because you look out and you see somebody wipe away a tear because of a song you played or, you know, just people being glad to be there.

You know, you can feel their energy.

And when that happens, you know, and I've been in experiences where it's been really powerful and it's like, man, I want this stay.

And this is really good.

This is great.

Part of tradition is a feeling of belonging.

You Know that this is home and this is where I can come now, even if I've made mistakes or done other things, or tried other churches or schools, I can always come back here.

And I think that our people in our families feel that way, that tradition, and that when you do come, what you're walking into or what you will experience will be top notch, top notch education, top notch religion, top notch worship.

The neighbors, most of them go here and they set their clocks by the bells, you know, and stuff like that.

And there'd be a great big hole here and there in their neighborhood if it wasn't here In 1848, 30 German families of Fort Wayne who would attended St Augustine's Church, which would become the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, had a strong desire to build a church where they could have the gospel preached in their own language.

They purchased a few lots at, the present intersection of Lafayette and Jefferson Streets.

They were so adamant about making this happen that several of the families mortgaged their farms.

This was an Irish church, this was a French church, and all of these farmers were German, and they think they felt they were getting short shrift.

So you talk about commitment.

If you didn't have a farm, if you couldn't provide for your family in those days, you died, you starve to death.

And yet these farmers pledged their lives and their farms and their honor for thirty thousand dollars to buy the land and build for Saint Mary's.

No, that would have gone down the tube.

So there.

This is the picture forever embedded in the minds of people who saw a piece of our city's history crumbled to the ground.

Fort Wayne firefighters rushed to save building first, arriving around 2:30 in the afternoon.

At first, the flames seemed to go out, but about an hour later, they started up again and there was no stopping them.

And around 3:50, the main steeple tumbled down inside the church.

The city of Fort Wayne, as well as the nation, was awestruck.

In 1993 when fire struck Saint Mary's, an architectural treasure representing the best days of German immigration.

The graceful 19th century church was destroyed, but the spirit behind the missions of the congregation continue.

No lightning strike or ensuing fire can take that away.

We had many parish meetings and we had about three or four of them, and they were speak out meetings.

What did you want to see in the church and what did you want to see?

We wrote these things down and then we were able then to compile them into a into a list that was manageable.

And with that, we hired the architect.

And then with that, the architect listened and listened to us and listened some more to us.

And then they started putting this together.

So basically what we have here, it probably represents about 95% of the requests that people had from that time.

So it's really the church design.

But they wanted came from the people and the architect then put it all together for us.

It's an urban church.

We are in the city.

It's not a suburban church.

And that's the reason that's up closer to the block and more approachable.

And we won one that would be open with the doors as they are to people and be welcoming.

And when you first come in one of the front doors here, the first thing you see is a baptism fountain, because the only way into the church is through baptism.

The Marys in the church, the old church, or enthroned in heaven, they were jeweled.

They had crowns on their heads.

This one is more representative of today in action in the world.

So we come to build this church.

We take it down.

And this is what we see, Mary, in a more human form at one of service.

So it's it's not we're not the the glitter and sparkle that the other church had.

And so this shows Mary and the more of the role of service as she was in more human form.

People in the neighborhood have to me.

They're happy that I'm staying here.

Well, that means St Mary's is staying here.

It was happy to see us rebuilt.

The neighbors really loved it because we didn't move.

And so that gave them the stability.

I don't mean the ones who go to church here, but I'm just talking.

We were in the neighborhood here and they were just thrilled that we stayed here.

The soup kitchen was started in January 1975.

Since that day, over five and a half million have been served.

The only requirement to receive food is that the person is hungry.

People in in Fort Wayne and in surrounding areas are very good to the soup kitchen.

And that's what we're here for.

That's what we feel that our calling is basically to see to the people.

We've got some characters that, you know, really care and they want to sing to you and be volunteers.

And then they'll say, Well, here comes your Boyfriend now.

They just really have a good time.

So the whole thing has to be open, which we call hospitality, and that has to be true back at the churches to be able to be that hospitality.

And that's so important.

Today, Saint Mary's is incredibly involved and committed to the poor for food, for clothing, for medical care.

And I think Father Tom, when he built that church, built it to reflect all those things.

Yes.

As a house of God.

And I think there's a church that seats about 300, but meeting rooms and an update kitchen and, so on.

And if that church is a crown to God, then the poor are its jewels.

And that is exactly the right kind of church in the right kind of place for the people that serves.

When people came into this from well-settled areas in Germany, they came into North American wilderness.

Finding it was very different from what they had anticipated.

Bishop John Henry Luers of Germany, who eventually became the first bishop of the Diocese of Fort Wayne, did not acclimate very well being accustomed to a more civilized environment.

He never stopped complaining about the situation at Fort Wayne.

Yet his remains were deposited in a vault under the cathedral sanctuary when he died.

The French pastor, Julian Benoit, on the other hand, was determined to build a great cathedral in the North American wilderness.

He is ultimately responsible for bringing the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception to the city of Fort Wayne.

Bishop Luers had no great desire to come here, and probably one of the reasons was because Monsignor Benoit was incredibly popular and anybody who was going to come in here was not going to be as popular as Monsignor Benoit.

But the story was that he had written to Rome several times and it basically being came down to anywhere but Fort Wayne.

When Monsignor went too harsh on Bishop Luers, because as time went on in his later years, he was very accepting of his place here.

And and I have seen a record of a visit he made to Cleveland in which he preached on the beauties of our place and and and gave a very positive affirmation of what was here.

So I think it was, you know, an initial shock maybe for him to come to what at the time was kind of a frontier town.

Monsignor Benoitwas a fascinating character.

Many people do not know it, but he avoided an Indian war.

Monsignor Benoit, would buy and sell properties, etc., to try to get this church built.

Because it was a stop and start.

But he was a great favorite of the Indians around here.

And when they were moved out, they were going to stand and fight unless this is the story, unless Benoit led them to their new lands.

And so he sought to get permission.

They would not give him permission.

So literally, he just took permission and he led them up to Nebraska or Oklahoma or wherever they were going, and then came back and therefore avoided the small Indian war that they certainly would have lost.

But with a great deal of bloodshed.

The establishment of the first Catholic Church in Fort Wayne, was credited to the Reverend Stephen Theodore Baden.

He came to Fort Wayne in 1830, and in 1831 he helped in choosing and purchasing a site for a church.

The arrangements for purchasing most of the present Cathedral Square was made on July 18th, 1831.

In 1837, the first church built on the Cathedral Square became St Augustine's.

Benoit came along in 1840 and developed schools and enticed the Sisters of Providence to Fort Wayne to teach St Augustine's was moved to make room for a larger, more permanent cathedral.

Shortly after that it was destroyed by fire in 1859.

The construction for the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception was then begun immediately at the direction of Father Benoit who was also the architect.

The structure, still exist today.

The people of the Cathedral were French and then they were German.

So eventually, you know it happens that St Mary's became the German Parish.

The was part of German tile, the front part of the cathedral that was French tile and it was symbolized also with a German bishop.

Bishop Louis was as German as can be.

And Monsignor Benoit, who was his right hand man.

As French as could be.

And in contrast to the European theater, whereby they were cutting each other off in the 1870 war, because the French and the Germans here, they made peace.

They found a way to survive together harmoniously.

It was several times that I would be in a cathedral or a church in Europe and think, you know, this is nice and it's quite beautiful.

But there is still something with the cathedral back at home.

And of course, I thought, well, you know, being used to it and or sort of partial, but I believe what it was is the energy of the structure itself.

And then again, the ambiance, the renovation of this stunning cathedral was undertaken by the bishop of the diocese of Fort Wayne and South Bend, working closely with the priests and congregation members in preparation with Pope John Paul II for the Great Jubilee of the year 2000.

Initially, the idea was not entirely met with approval from the city of Fort Wayne, however.

They had over a thousand names petitioning not to do anything in the cathedral.

So we had some history.

And of course, most of those people didn't know they, couldn't imagine what we were going to do.

One of the big things, of course, was removing communion rail, which we did, and you see it at our baptistery.

They didn't realize that our plan was to use all of these elements in a new and different way.

And then also the other thing, the beautiful woodwork that you're seeing there, the railroad doors, as we call it, behind the altar there, we were going to tear that out, strip it out, throw it away.

Terrible things were you know, so many people had been misinformed by these very violent people and they thought it was going to be all these terrible things.

That's why they signed these things.

By the time it was finished and people could come in that we have nothing but compliments.

The cathedral was closed on Easter Sunday, 1998, and slowly a work of art began to develop.

Many craftsmen and consultants worked with a common dedication to the project.

The magnificent edifice was dedicated on December 8th, 1998.

I think what it has done, in my opinion, it enhanced what we already had in the beauty of the cathedral.

There was one fella that the story was in the paper, as a matter of fact.

He sat down and he looked at the church and began to cry because he was so overwhelmed with its beauty.

And, you know, we did not destroy church.

We enhanced it.

We took a marvelous interior and brought it into the 21st century.

I think that if you were here at a mass in the morning when the sun is shining and suddenly you see the lights, the myriad of lights coming through the windows and almost the kaleidoscope, you say, gee, I thought they were pretty before.

But no, they were breathtaking.

One of the things we're proudest of, of course, is the stations.

And as you picture them, you will notice that the gates of the city behind the station change for every station.

The armor and the costuming changes for every station.

Christ always remains the same notice, especially the 11th station.

Christ is being crucified and above him is standing a prelate, wearing a red cassock.

A reminder to us that not all religious are good.

And notice that the man who is crucifying him is a huntsmen of the 1830s and he has bullets at his belt.

So again, from the crucifixion itself, throughout history, Christ remains same.

Everything changes.

The story of the candlesticks, the huge bowls of the cup, those were my older sticks, is that they came from the Church of the Madeleine in Paris.

And Monsignor Benoit was visiting.

He saw them and asked if he could have them copy.

And so they were.

And If this tradition is correct, there are two sets of those in the world.

One is in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and the other at the Church of the Madeleine in Paris.

The choir is a very important part of the cathedral.

I have a wonderful choir of about 40 men and women and they're very devoted.

They come to just about every rehearsal.

And if they can't come, they call and let me know, which in a lot of choirs is very unusual.

So the music is important here.

It's important to the rectors and it's very important to the bishop that we have good music.

We're here on earth to save our soul.

It's the most important thing in life.

And if we can if we can help people, that's that's the important thing.

And the choir is there a great bunch of people there.

They're good people.

Cathedral can be proud of them for the job that they do, and it's an honor to be one of them.

God's been good to me.

I'll sing as long as I can.

It's the place of my ordination to priesthood.

We want these very off the tiles of the very floor of the sanctuary on which I was prostrate and before the bishop at the time and prayer, and then at that time ordained to be a Catholic priest.

And So it has that kind of a of a memory to me and a meaning of importance and something that will always be part of my life, the beginning of my priesthood right here in this very church congregations, writes historian James Wind, serve as windows into the zones of modern life, which are otherwise remote.

And in accessible.

Within their walls, fundamental beliefs about God and the world intermingle with ethnic holiday traditions and images of the American way of life.

Where else do people so clearly express the collective representations of the reality?

They share the memory, hopes, fears, anxieties and crisis that shape who we are?

Fort Wayne.

City of Churches.

Fort Wayne City of Churches is made possible in part by grants from Vintage Archonics, an award winning architectural and engineering firm serving Fort Wayne since 1927.

Vintage Arconics has established a prominent position in the design of hospitals, industrial facilities and churches, with over 90 church projects completed in just the last 15 years.

Vintage Arconics is proud to sponsor this program, highlighting Fort Waynes historic places of worship and the Helen P. VanArnam Foundation.