NOTE: Enjoy this excerpt from The American Daily Reader, by CatholicVote president Brian Burch and Emily Stimpson Chapman. To order the complete volume, visit the CatholicVote store today!
Father Wilhelm Grutza, pastor of Milwaukee’s St. Josaphat Catholic Church, was determined to not let a good building go to waste. His parish, composed mostly of Polish immigrants, had grown rapidly since its founding in 1888. And by 1896, Grutza realized a new church was necessary.
That year, he hired preeminent church architect Erhard Brielmaier to build a second St. Josaphat’s, preferably something much larger and modeled on St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Brielmaier’s design was almost complete when Grutza threw a wrench in the works.
The priest had just learned that the Federal Building in Chicago was scheduled for demolition. It was a magnificent building, with walls of stone, pillars of granite, and doors of bronze. To Grutza, it seemed a shame to waste all that stone and granite. It seemed equally shameful to spend a fortune on new materials for the church when old materials could be had for a song.
Perhaps, the priest proposed, if Brielmaier made some changes to his design, neither materials nor money would go to waste. Brielmaier agreed.
While the architect reverse-engineered the church’s design to accommodate new materials, the priest struck a deal to purchase the salvage material from the Federal Building for a mere $20,000. He then arranged to have all 200,000 tons of it shipped to Milwaukee on 500 railroad flatcars.
When it arrived, builders measured and numbered the blocks of stone to determine their place in the church. They then fit the blocks together, jigsaw puzzle style. Amazingly, the builders made almost no cuts to the stone, and they wasted almost nothing. Along with the stone, six granite columns from the Federal Building, as well as bronze railings, doors, and light fixtures, found a home in the church.
After four years of construction, Archbishop Francis Katzer dedicated the church in a Solemn High Mass on July 21, 1901. Twenty-eight years later, in 1929, St. Josaphat’s became America’s third minor basilica. It remains, however, its only recycled basilica.
