First Catholic Church in Scottsdale - Scottlsdale, AZ
Posted by: 
dkestrel
N 33° 29.522 W 111° 55.464
12S E 414127 N 3706218
Hand-built in 1933 by volunteers from Scottsdale's Hispanic immigrant families, the Old Mission Church was originally constructed using some 14,000 adobe bricks.
Waymark Code: WMKPN5
Location: Arizona, United States
Date Posted: 05/12/2014
Views: 8
Prominent local architect R.T. Evans assisted with the design of the Spanish Colonial Revival style church. The Old Mission Church is located on the east side of Brown Avenue, just south of First Street. It served Scottsdale Catholics until a population boom in the early 1950s necessitated building a much larger Our Lady of Perpetual Help (OLPH) parish structure on Miller Road. After housing church organizations, then the Scottsdale Symphony for over 20 years, OLPH began restoration of the historic mission in 2004, and now uses the small facility for special services and events.
Churches were typically one of the earliest community buildings constructed as part of the permanent settlement of a town. Worship was a unifying practice and a means of bringing civilization to the frontier. Typically, church buildings were built in more distinctive architectural styles than the other buildings of a settlement. Their design and the quality of their construction was considered important because the building represented the pride the community members had in the particular religious group to which they belonged. Our Lady of Perpetual Help is an excellent example of this aspect of the historic development of communities in the West.
The Catholic Church had an early presence in the Valley with a main church in downtown Phoenix and other mission churches to serve those who lived in outlying areas. For many years, the Catholic residents of Scottsdale had to travel to other locations or attend services in
makeshift facilities with visiting priests. By the late 1920s, however, the parish had grown to a sufficient size to establish a mission to serve Scottsdale. Soon plans were made to build their own church building. The economic hard times brought by the Depression made the task of assembling the necessary funds a difficult task. A site was selected in Scottsdale’s original town site near the barrio where the first Hispanics settled as they migrated to the valley to
work in the cotton industry. The E.O. Brown family donated a site for the building in 1927.
The stained-glass windows were made by Bernabe Herrera, a Scottsdale tinsmith and later the parish catechism teacher. Each family made its own pew. The finished church seated 150 people and the first Mass was celebrated in October 1933. Over the next twenty years the parish steadily grew and a larger church at Miller Road and Main Street was built in 1956. Since that time, the historic Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church has remained a vital community space, used by numerous groups.
FIRST - Classification Variable: Place or Location
Date of FIRST: 01/01/1933
More Information - Web URL: [Web Link]
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