| Additional Information: | A 'site file' exists for this property. It contains additional information such as correspondence, newspaper clippings, or historical information. It is a public record and may be viewed in person at the Wisconsin Historical Society, State Historic Preservation Office.
TUDOR ARCHED ENTRY, MITERED ARCHED WINDOWS IN GROUPS OF 3CUT LIMESTONE PIERS W/ FIELDSTONE INFILL BETWEEN LARGE LOBED OCULUS IN TOWER PARSONAGE NEXT DOOR OF SIMILAR STYLE AND MATERIALS
In 1876, Father Engelbert Blum of Sturgeon Bay organized a mission called St. John of the Desert to serve Egg Harbor’s growing community of French Canadians. The congregation became St. John’s parish in 1908, and the following year the members replaced their small building south of Egg Harbor with a stone structure conveniently in town. St. John’s most striking trait is its highly tactile and polychromatic use of materials: colorful split-fieldstone cobbles, random-coursed and trimmed with contrasting rock-faced limestone, make the church seem both folksy and formal. A squat tower rises between the corbiesteps of the front-gabled roof. A rose window graces the tower, with a pointed-arch bell cot and a simple cross crowning the composition. On each side elevation, a window bay with a gabled parapet gives way to trios of narrow lancets, lighting the nave inside.
Resurveyed 2021: The complex (including the rectory AHI #243010) containing these two buildings is located on the east side of STH 42, both of which are oriented on a southwest/northeast axis. Historically known as the St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, and today as the Stella Maris Catholic Church in Egg Harbor, the structure is set back from the highway by about sixty-five feet while the rectory’s setback is about sixty feet.
The 1909 church (AHI #25989) is discussed at modest length in the Wisconsin Historic Preservation Database and requires little additional information at the moment. It appears an exceptional example of Gothic architecture applied to a small-town church as constructed with structural framing of quarried stone blocks with infill between of split boulders and windows.
Families were settling in Egg Harbor in the 1850s and 1860s. By the late 1860s, Roman Catholic priests began visiting the settlement and offering services. The community’s first Roman church was a small log structure built in 1878, followed in 1888 by a larger structure. As the number of families in Egg Harbor grew, so did the need for a new, even larger church, construction on which started in 1909. Pledges of labor, or $100, toward the new facility were received from fifty-two families. The structure was not yet finished in October 1910, but it was then that the church’s dedicatory service was held. The first resident priest arrived in 1918, at which time the rectory was built immediately adjacent to, and just northwest of the church building. It was designed so that its exterior appearance matched that of the church. The rectory, now used largely for office space, was renovated in 1968/1969, as was the church in 1973/1974. The church received a new alter in 1991/1992. |
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