Leeneia, it's interesting to study the history of construction of Catholic churches in the U.S. during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We tend to think of church construction in terms of how it's done nowadays, but that's not how it happened.

According to this history of Milwaukee, the parish was founded as an offshoot of St. Stanislaw Parish (with the golden domes) in 1888, and a small building was erected to serve as church and school. The first church burned down the next year, and was replaced by a new brick building that cost thirty thousand dollars to build. That building proved to be too small, and construction of the current building began in 1898. When construction was completed, the old building became the parish school. St. Josaphat's and St. Stanislaus are still the most visible Polish churches in Milwaukee (although St. Stan's is now the center of the Latin Mass community, and is no longer Polish). This page says that there were seventeen Polish parishes built in Milwaukee from 1872-1925. Also, be sure to take a look at this Wikipedia page on the "Polish cathedral" style of architecture (although very few of these churches were actually cathedrals - the seat of a bishop).

The new building used materials from the demolished Chicago Customs House and Post Office (a/the Federal Building). What isn't said in the history, is that I'm sure that everyone involved in the construction of the church was Polish, and that the building contractors were Polish and were members of the parish. Most likely, almost everyone who worked on the building was a member of the parish. The parish served the Lincoln Village community of Milwaukee, which was still predominantly Polish when I lived on the South Side of Milwaukee in the 1960s. Even in the 1960s, the parish served as a Polish community center and the parish still served as a place where people could find referrals for employment, medical care, housing, and whatnot. Lincoln Village had a small Latino population in the 1960s, and it was the only place in Milwaukee where you could get decent Mexican food, and tacos that weren't made with Cheeze Whiz. Lincoln Village is now 55% Latino. I'm sure the Poles have assimilated quite well by now, but the whole South Side of Milwaukee was Polish when I lived there in the 1960s, except for a small strip by Lake Michigan.

So, my point is that the church wasn't just a church - it was the very center of the community, an expression of the identity and life of the entire Polish community. I imagine that members of St. Josaphat's may have come from one part of Poland, and members of other parishes from other areas of Poland.

My home town was Racine, a little industrial city 25 miles south of Milwaukee. I think we had eight Catholic parishes in the center of town, all within walking distance of each other. St. John Nepomuk was Czech, St. Mary's and Holy Name were German, St. Pat's and St. Rose of Lima were Irish, St. Casimir was Lithuanian, and Holy Trinity was Slovak. I can't remember which parishes were Italian. Mass was in Latin, but all other activities of the parish were in the language of the predominant ethnic group. Again, each parish served as a social, cultural, and economic center for its ethnic group. Most times, parishes imported their priests from the Mother Country. St. Francis Seminary, which I attended, was German in origin and taught classes in German, so its graduates weren't of much use to small-town ethnic parishes. By the time I attended St. Francis in the 1960s, I was required to take 6 years of Latin, two years of Greek, and 3 years of my choice of German, French, or Polish. Later on, training in Spanish became a near-universal requirement for American Catholic seminarians.

And since churches were so important to the community, even poor communities could raise the money to build elaborate churches - and much of that construction money stayed right in the community. Thriftiness was usually the rule, however. It wasn't unusual for churches to be built from the remains of older buildings, like the Federal Building that served as the basis for St. Josaphat's. The Germans who built St. Francis Church in Sacramento used parts of the stairway banisters from the State Capitol for the choir loft railing and for statue pedestals - that why you'll see the state mammal, the grizzly bear, all over the interior of the church.

I think that priests of my generation, including many of my seminary classmates, failed to recognize the importance of parishes for anything but religious purposes. For the most part, my seminary classmates were homogenized Americans with no particular ethnic identity, and I remember how we used to joke about all this ethnic stuff. It's too bad we didn't understand and respect it, and work to preserve the best of it. Maybe that's part of the reason why so many beautiful old Catholic churches stand empty in American cities.

As for acoustics, they're mixed. Whenever I visit an old Catholic church, I make a habit of testing the acoustics by singing a little Gregorian chant. Some are terrific, and some are not. I'll bet a lot depended on who was directing music at the time the church was built.

-Joe-