St. Albertus Roman Catholic Church

St. Albertus Church is significant in Michigan because of its unusual architectural features. Most churches built in the State in the late nineteenth century derived their architectural vocabulary from the Gothic churches of England, France and Germany. St. Albertus' style was inspired by the Gothic churches of Western Poland. It was designed to emphasize the Polish origins of its congregation and to set it apart from the other churches in this section of Detroit which was inhabited mostly by immigrants of German origin. St. Albertus is also significant because it is the mother church of some thirty parishes in Detroit, Hamtramck and Wyandotte that were established to serve worshipers of Polish origin. Most of the early Polish immigrants to Detroit came from northern Poland where the occupation by Prussia had encouraged many people to become bilingual. As a result, most of them settled in St. Joseph's parish, an active German parish on the near east side. When the St. Joseph's parishioners decided to build a new church in 1871, the Poles offered to help. They were told that they could but that their pews would have to be in a localized section of the church. Unwilling to be relegated to the back of the liturgical bus, the Poles decided to start their own parish. Starting with about 300 families, the parish grew rapidly with a large influx of Polish immigrants. By 1882 there were over 1000 families in the parish. That was also the year that Father Dominik Kolasinski arrived from Krakow to become pastor of the church. By the time Father Kolasinski arrived, there was already factional feuding between the northern Poles (Kaszubs) and some of the later immigrants who came from the area of Galicia in southern Poland. Father Kolasinski tried to calm these differences by appealing to national pride. He began a fund raising drive to erect a church that would reflect Polish traditions. (Services were at that time being held in a frame building that resembled a New England meeting house.) By the time it was dedicated, July 4, 1885, the new church had cost $84,000; some $20,000 more than its estimated cost.

St. Albertus is a typical hall church with a transept in a cruciform plan. The east facade is dominated by a single tower with an octagonal spire. The spire has been truncated: A smaller octagonal spire marks the intersection of the nave and the transept. The building is constructed of brick. The simplicity of the building material and the relatively plain design of the facades is contrasted by the richness of the stone tracery in each of the windows. The tracery pattern is an octofoil set within a pointed arch upon a flat bar beneath which are two or three serrated arches containing stained glass panels. This basic pattern is repeated more elaborately within the tympanum of each of the three main portals. The interior layout is characteristic of the hall church design, composed of a high main aisle and lower vaulted side aisles. The ceiling is formed of ribbed plaster cross vaulting which rests on timber columns faced with colonnettes. The shallow sanctuary is defined by an arcaded marble communion rail fronting the west wall of each transept. The chancel proper terminates in a segmented apse behind the marble side alters, each with a glazed chamber containing a dressed mannequin in the Eastern European fashion. There are two additional side alters in wood with carved reredos. In the twelve lunette panels over the nave arcades, there are depictions of churches of Western Poland. These were added about twenty years after the church was built and may have been adapted from engravings found in a three volume work, Historye Cudowrtych Orbrazow Najsivietszj Maryi Panny, published in Krakow in 1908.