St. Boniface Roman Catholic Church

The German Catholic citizens of Detroit began moving to the west side in the 1860s, particularly along the Michigan Avenue corridor.[2] In 1867, Bishop Casper Borgess created St. Boniface parish to serve the German population on the west side. In 1873, a two-story, red brick Italianate rectory building was built for the parish at a cost of $6,000.[2] A stone church building was planned by the prominent local architect William M. Scott, and construction was completed in 1883 at a cost of $30,000.[2]

The parish was closed in 1989,[4] and the building was demolished a few years later.[5]

St. Boniface Church was an eclectic example of Romanesque Revival and Ruskinian Gothic architecture. It was built in a cruciform shape from red brick and cream-painted wood, and featured a high nave roof, steeply gabled stone entry arches, and a central pavilion with recessed round arches.[2] The church had a square, louvered bell tower with an octagonal metal roof. The side walls were supported by heavy, stone-embellished buttresses.[2] The rectory was a two-story Italianate stone building, painted black. It had a modified hip-roof with cross-gabled dormers and a bracketed corniceline, an open gabled portico, and rectangular and round arch window enframements.[2]

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  St. Boniface Roman Catholic Church, c. 1910
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  St. Boniface School, c. 1910
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  Lot where St. Boniface Roman Catholic Church once stood