Sacramento and the Catholic Church: Shaping a Capital City

7. Carving a Space and Creating Community: The Catholic Church and the North Area, 1940–1970

In post–World War II Sacramento, Catholic parishes popped up like dandelions in suburban lawns. One of the first was named for the legendary St. Philomena. Its origins were typical of suburban parishes all over the country. Begun in 1947 in the Bungalow Club, a dance hall on Auburn Boulevard to the northeast of the city, it caught the crest of a wave of suburban migration. By 1953 the church presided over a highly visible sixacre tract along El Camino Avenue, one of the major commercial arteries of Sacramento’s burgeoning North Area. Its school packed in nearly eight hundred pupils, and its parish plant included a hall, convent, rectory , and church—all designed in a modified Spanish-mission motif. The three bells in its campanile, erected in 1961, rang out the church times for the surrounding homes. Next door, a girls’ Catholic high school, Loretto, soon welcomed uniformed young women from some of Sacramento’s “best” Catholic families. This tale of brick and mortar, replicated all over suburban Catholic America, was only the veneer of an even more important story. Local c h a p t e r 7 Carving a Space and Creating Community The Catholic Church and the North Area, 1940–1970 “The spirit engendered almost immediately” 187 map 2 Catholic Churches in the northwest corridor of Sacramento County SACRAMENTO St. Philomene Holy Family Our Lady of the Assumption St. Ignatius Loyola St. Lawrence the Martyr St. Mel St. John Vianney St. John the Evangelist St. John the Baptist Our Lady of Lourdes Presentation CITRUS HEIGHTS FOLSOM ORANGEVALE ARDEN FAIR OAKS RANCHO CORDOVA ARCADE CARMICHAEL NORTH HIGHLANDS SACRAMENTO 80 50 Catholic leaders seemed to understand that something special was taking place, as the editor of the Catholic newspaper declared: “The founding of the new parish was not so astounding physically. What made the new parish unique was the spirit engendered almost immediately in the people. Content to haul chairs every Sunday and assist at a Mass in a still warm night club, the parishioners showed as much interest in the new parish as they did in their own new homes.”1 St. Philomene’s and its sister parishes in the growing North Area not only were spiritual homes but also helped build a sense of community in “fractionated” areas struggling to create social networks and adjust to their new environment. Sacramento suburbanized in virtually every direction except west, enhancing its status as a major metropolitan center. By 1963 Yolo and Placer counties would be tributary to it. Historian Thomas Norris notes simply of postwar Sacramento that “urban growth slipped the bounds of the city limits .” Between 1940 and 1970 the population of the county skyrocketed from 170,333 to 634,373. Home building grew exponentially during the postwar era, as a 1957 account relates: “Homebuilding has set the pace in the construction industry since World War II. The city hit its high with 1,947 single dwelling units in 1950 and the county’s record of 6,437 single units was established in 1955.” The article also notes that subdivision starts, sporadic since 1850, took off at a sustained pace after the war, growing “from nine in 1945, . . . [to] 1955 with the development of 147 new subdivisions.”2 Growth had been especially fast and furious in the wider region where St. Philomene’s began, called the North Area. This fan-shaped section, located across the American River northeast of Sacramento, extended east to the Sierra foothills and included the townships of Arcade, Center, Mississippi, Dry Creek, and Sylvan. Initially framed on the north and south by Auburn and Folsom roads and bounded on the west by the American River, the North Area also encompassed older communities such as Orangevale, Fair Oaks, Citrus Heights, Carmichael, and North Sacramento. Between 1947 and 1961 the Sacramento Diocese opened nine new parishes in the North Area. In addition, one parish, St. Mel’s, was raised from mission to parochial status and had to build a new church on a larger parcel of property; another parish founded in 1857, St. John’s in Folsom, built an entirely new church and acquired additional property for a new school and convent. t h e c at h o l i c c h u r c h a n d t h e n o r t h a r e a 189 These parishes provided spiritual homes, religious education, and social...