Chicago's Greatest Year, 1893: The White City and the Birth of a Modern Metropolis

6. A Church for Father Tolton

113 N6 O A Church for Father Tolton From Italy they came. From Ireland, Poland, and Slovakia. From Bohemia, Lithuania, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, French Canada, Bavaria, and the Rhineland. They were Roman Catholics , and they were dramatically altering Chicago, changing it from a city founded mostly by Protestant fortune seekers from New England and upstate New York to a city in which the bells of grand Catholic churches, heard throughout the neighborhoods , now counted the hours of the day.1 In 1893, three-fourths of the immigrants coming to Chicago were Catholic, and that year saw some significant developments for the Catholic population. For one, the “Edwards Law” was repealed. This 1889 legislation stipulated that instruction in all schools, public and parochial, had to be in English, and immigrant parents feared that the law meant that the Protestant-dominated state government would now dictate policy to parochial schools. German Lutherans joined with Catholics in fighting the law, and their victory was a great achievement. Then, in September 1893, a group of women launched the Chicago Catholic Women’s League, which was dedicated to charitable activities. And in 1893, the fourth black Catholic congress was held in Chicago. As the historian Charles Shanabruch has expressed it, by 1893, “Chicago Catholicism was no longer insecure. Through strength of numbers, wise leadership, and increasing success in the marketplace and in the political arena, it had become 114 A Church for Father Tolton self-assured.”2 No wonder: in 1880, Chicago had thirty-eight Catholic parishes; in 1890, it had eighty-one. In that year, the Catholic Church counted 262,047 souls in its Chicago flock, which far outnumbered the Protestant count.3 Catholic churches and parishes were opening at a furious pace in Chicago in the early 1890s, creating a legacy of extraordinary buildings not regularly noted by historians. Although excellent churches were built before the fire of 1871 (Old St. Patrick’s and Holy Family are the two finest surviving examples), the great surge of Catholic church building occurred from the 1890s through the 1920s. The Germans favored the Gothic style, as seen in such edifices as St. Alphonsus and St. Paul’s. Polish churches, however, normally followed baroque and Renaissance designs—such as St. Mary of the Angels—and the Lithuanians followed suit (Holy Cross Church). The Irish opted for a mix of styles, as in the Romanesque Revival of St. Pius V (1893) but St. Mary of the Angels, built to serve Chicago’s Polish community, is a striking example of the grand Catholic churches erected by immigrants. (Photograph by the author) A Church for Father Tolton 115 generally were partial to high Victorian Gothic, the style of Holy Name Cathedral itself, which was rebuilt shortly after the fire and then renovated—in 1893. One of the less impressive churches to open in 1893 was St. Monica’s on Thirty-Sixth and Dearborn. It was unfinished. Although backers had raised enough funds to begin construction, the money ran out before it could be completed. Nevertheless, the opening of St. Monica’s doors was a landmark in the history of American Catholicism. Leading its congregation was a thirty-nine-year-old pastor named Augustus Tolton, the first black Catholic priest in the history of the United States.4 Actually, calling him the first black priest in the United States requires some qualification. Three black Cath­ olic priests preceded him—brothers named James Augustine Healy, Patrick Francis Healy, and Alexander Sherwood Healy, who were the sons of an Irishman named Michael Morris Healy and his light-skinned slave mis­ tress, Mary Eliza, with whom he appears to have lived with as a spouse. The boys were sent north to be educated at Holy Cross, and eventually all three were ordained—James in Paris in 1854, Alexander in Rome four years later, and Patrick in Belgium in 1864. James even rose to the position of bishop, and Patrick became rector of Georgetown University. Although some people recognized their African ancestry, the brothers took little interest in the condition of black people and seem to have been content to pass for white. For this reason, Cyprian Davis, the author of History of Black Catholics in the United States, calls Tolton “the first black American priest whom all knew and recognized as black.” Father Augustus Tolton. The berretta with the red tassel indicates his standing as a Vatican scholar. (Brenner Library, Quincy University...