St. Michael Catholic Church | |
 Front of the church | |
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| Location | 40 Walnut St.,Mechanicsburg,Ohio |
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| Coordinates | 40°4′20″N83°33′30″W / 40.07222°N 83.55833°W /40.07222; -83.55833 |
| Area | Less than 1 acre (0.40 ha) |
| Built | 1888 |
| Architectural style | Gothic Revival |
| MPS | Mechanicsburg MRA |
| NRHP reference No. | 85001892[1] |
| Added to NRHP | August 29, 1985 |
St. Michael's Catholic Church is a historicCatholicchurch inMechanicsburg, a village inChampaign County,Ohio,United States. Completed in the 1880s, it served a group of Catholics who had already been meeting together for nearly thirty years. One of several historic churches in the village, it has been designated ahistoric site because of its well-preserved nineteenth-century architecture.
The first settlers inGoshen Township arrived circa 1805,[2]: 586 and Mechanicsburg wasplatted on 6 August 1814.[2]: 596 Organized religion was rare in the earliest years; the first churches were established bycircuit-riding preachers from theMethodist Episcopal Church, who founded small religious classes that met in settlers' log cabins.[2]: 591 Mechanicsburg's first church was a Methodist congregation organized in 1814,[2]: 598 and by the 1880s the village boasted four Protestant churches:Baptist,black Baptist,African Methodist Episcopal, andMethodist Protestant.[2]: 600
Champaign County's earliest Catholics were Irish immigrants, who came to thecounty seat ofUrbana in the 1840s and 1850s as railroad laborers. Viewed with suspicion by their neighbors both because of their nationality and their religion, they receivedthe sacraments only occasionally from travelling priests before the establishment of St. Mary's Church in 1853.[3]: 513 Mechanicsburg's first Catholic families, who were also largely Irish,[4]: 6 worshipped at St. Mary's or in nearbyRosedale; occasionalMasses were said in Mechanicsburg by travelling priests until the congregation was attached to Our Lady of Lourdes parish inMarysville in 1872.[3]: 513
Mass was first celebrated in Mechanicsburg in 1859,[5] the parish was canonically erected in 1865,[6] and it gained a more permanent organization in 1880.[3]: 513 By the end of the 1880s, the parish had witnessed the completion of its church building on Walnut Street. In its earlier decades, the membership included many families who lived in the countryside surrounding Mechanicsburg, and the members' devotion to their church prompted a local author to declare them "extremely faithful in attendance on its services".[5] The parish obtained arectory in October 1904; a woman who lived on Walnut Street died in that month, and her will included a provision donating her house for use as a rectory. By 1917, the membership consisted of 38 families comprising 135 individuals. The parish operated aSunday school and multiple small groups for various activities, including a branch of theSociety of the Holy Name.[3]: 514
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Construction on St. Michael's Church began in 1885. After approximately $5,000 had been spent to complete it, the building wasdedicated onThanksgiving Day 1886 byWilliam Henry Elder, theArchbishop of Cincinnati.[3]: 514 Built of brick on a brickfoundation and highlighted with stone elements,[7] the church is a three-story building with acomposite roof that rises in agable. Numerous details produce a distinctiveGothic Revival appearance, including theogive-arched windows and their stonehood molds and the archedbay surrounding the entrance andtransom. When these elements combine with non-Gothic components such as thesteeple and thebrackets under thecornice, the result is an architectural landmark in a street otherwise filled with houses.[8] Its style is comparable to that of several other Gothic Revival churches in Mechanicsburg that were built in the late nineteenth century,[4]: 8 despite a remodelling project conducted in 1901.[3]: 514
St. Michael's Church was listed on theNational Register of Historic Places in 1985. It was part of amultiple property submission of approximately twenty buildings,[1] scattered throughout the village in such a low concentration that ahistoric district designation was not practical.[4]: 8 While many of the other twenty Mechanicsburg buildings were houses, four were the village's other historic churches: theMechanicsburg Baptist Church, theChurch of Our Saviour (Episcopalian), theSecond Baptist Church, and theUnited Methodist Church. Like all four of the others, St. Michael's Church qualified for inclusion on the Register because of its historically significant architecture.[1]
Today, St. Michael's is an active parish of theArchdiocese of Cincinnati.[9] Along with Champaign County's other Catholic churches — St. Mary's in Urbana, Sacred Heart inSt. Paris, and Immaculate Conception inNorth Lewisburg — it is a part of the SpringfieldDeanery.[10]
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