Saint Paul Roman Catholic Church Complex

St. Paul Roman Catholic Parish was the first Roman Catholic parish in the Grosse Pointes. Its history parallels the growth of the Grosse Pointe community from the early nineteenth century French farms along Lake St. Clair, through the summer cottages of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to the suburbanized year-round community of today.

The entire parish complex is a distinguished example of a late-nineteenth/early twentieth-century Roman Catholic parish complex containing the standard buildings that one would expect to see in such a complex - church, rectory, parish house, convent, and school. The church, completed in 1899, is a rare example of the French Gothic Revival style of architecture in the Detroit area. Stained glass windows by Fredericks & Wolfram Art Glass Company of Detroit, installed in 1901, and Franz Mayer & Company of Munich, Germany, installed in 1924, contribute to the significance of the church. The works of Harry J.

Rill, architect of the church, and Smith Hinchman & Grylls, Inc., architect of the school and convent, are well known in the Detroit area.

The Saint Paul Roman Catholic Church Complex is comprised of church, rectory, parish hall, barn (garage), convent and school buildings that occupy the deep, narrow strip of land extending between Lake Shore Road and Grosse Pointe Boulevard. St. Paul Roman Catholic Church is a brick and sandstone French Gothic Revival building with limestone foundations constructed between 1895 and 1899. St.

Paul Roman Catholic Church is a rectangular, two-towered, gable roofed building with short transepts and no clerestory. The front facade is asymmetrical, with the right handed (northeastern) tower much larger than the left-handed (southeastern) one. Entry is through three sets of double wooden doors, each set within a gabled, pointed-arch enframement. Beneath the church’s front gable is the large rose window depicting "Saint Paul With A Sword." The side elevations are composed of four bays containing traceried pointed arch windows between the wall buttresses.

The nave of the church is barrel vaulted; its crossing is groin vaulted, and the apse is domed. Compound columns carry the compound arches that divide the nave from the side aisles. An organ gallery is above the narthex.