St. Ignatius Catholic Church - Baltimore MD - Roman Catholic Churches on Waymarking.com

From the church website in part:

About the Parish
St. Ignatius is one of Baltimore’s oldest Roman Catholic churches, constructed in 1856 as an addition to Loyola College and High School and known as the College Church. The purpose of a large church building was to develop a parish of sufficient size and wealth to support an educational institution, which would, in turn, develop an educated Catholic population. St. Ignatius differed from other churches of its time because it wasn’t founded solely by Catholic immigrants, but by both native-born and Irish immigrants. The elaborate church building promoted a sense of pride and security for a religious minority.
In 1922 Loyola College moved to its present Evergreen campus and in 1933 Loyola High School moved to its Blakefield campus. The Loyola complex, once the headquarters for the Maryland Province of the Jesuits, today houses Center Stage, Maryland’s state theater.

Architecture & Cost
Louis L. Long was a popular Baltimore architect who executed several notable brownstone buildings in Mount Vernon, including 105 West Monument Street and “Brownstone Row,” 18-28 East Mount Vernon Place. The cost of the land parcel was $23,333. The entire cost of the church and college was $89,000. A private Bank, the Associated Professors of Loyola College, was created to finance the construction and functioned as an investment tool for parish members. Many of the construction contracts were given to parish members. The parish traded waiver of pew rents and tuition costs in exchange for labor on the church’s construction, thus reducing construction costs. The debt was assumed by the Society of Jesus so that the church could be consecrated when it opened (Catholic churches are dedicated but not consecrated until they are debt-free).

Remodeling and Style
In an extensive 1884 remodeling, stained glass windows by Redding, Baird Company of Boston were installed. The mural on the ceiling “Assumption of the Blessed Virgin into Heaven” by William Lamprecht was added, possibly replacing an earlier mural by Brumidi, the muralist for the Capitol in Washington DC. A new spirit of restoration infused the 1998/1999 $1.7 million renovation project, which restored and/or replaced architectural details so that the church’s interior again glows with color and light as originally designed. The narthex was created at the same time, carefully designed to blend with the original architecture.

The exterior design of the St. Ignatius Church is the typical Italianate style of the brick row houses being constructed in Mount Vernon in the 1850s. It is Neo-classical in its symmetrical composition. The baroque interior design was inspired in the late renaissance/baroque model of Vignola’s The Gesu, 1568, mother church of the Jesuits in Rome, as are many Jesuit churches. The Baroque interior decoration is a surprising contrast to the chaste classical style of the exterior. Filled with color and light, the bold decoration of the sanctuary conveys a rich and active interior space that soars upwards toward the heavens. There are no internal columns to divide the space.

Congregation History
This new parish spoke of the coming of age of Catholics in Baltimore. In a city where Catholics clung to the edge of social respectability, they created their own social order, their own goals and expressions of personal improvement, and their own vision of their place in the American Republic. In 1853 The Maryland legislature granted a charter of Loyola, allowing it to grant college-level degrees. The school grew rapidly, and by 1855 the new building was opened on Calvert Street, only a block from the Calvert Station, the southern terminus of the Baltimore & Susquehanna Railroad, on the corner of Calvert and Franklin Streets, allowing easy access to the school’s new location. The College Chapel was an integral part of the school, serving both as a place of worship for students and as a parish church.

Although black Catholics worshipped in the main church for the first year after it was opened, on September 20, 1857, the basement or lower church became the Chapel of the Blessed Peter Claver with services held specifically for the African American members of the parish on Sundays and some other occasions. While still within the walls of St. Ignatius, this became a canonically distinct parish with jurisdiction over “the whole colored population of Baltimore in the same manner as the pastors of German churches.” In 1863 the old Universalist Church, at Calvert and Pleasant Street, was purchased by the Fathers of St. Ignatius’, and dedicated under the patronage of St. Francis Xavier as the first Catholic Church in the United States especially for the African American community.

Type of Church: Church Status of Building: Actively in use for worship Date of organization: 01/01/1856 Date of building construction: 01/01/1856 Diocese: Archdiocese of Baltimore Maryland Address/Location: 740 N. Calvert Street Baltimore, MD United States 21202 Relvant Web Site: [Web Link] Dominant Architectural Style: Not listed Associated Shrines, Art, etc.: Not listed Archdiocese: Not listed

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Date Logged Log User Rating   08/29/2021 Don.Morfe visited it