If you have visited Chicago, you have probably stopped at the famous Water Tower, but do you know about a treasure of the past just a mile from there? A magnificent building with a Baroque-style interior, this is St. John Cantius Catholic Church at 825 N. Carpenter Street. It was designed by the German-born architect Adolphus Druiding and completed in 1898 through the efforts of a devoted Polish immigrant community.
Enter the church, and you walk into an opulent beauty of marble and painted stone, rich decorations and stained glass, all suffused with a golden glow. Stay for a service, and you will experience Catholic worship performed in the old way, with both the priest and the congregation facing toward the altar. Listen, and you will hear the glorious, uplifting music of Mozart, Beethoven, and other Classical composers.
You are lucky: if you had visited in the early 1980s, you would have found a disintegrating, sad building slated for demolition, in a ghetto-like neighborhood ruined first by the stock market crash of 1929 and later by lengthy construction projects that made it difficult even to get to the church. But starting in the later 1980s, gradual improvement of the neighborhood and the heroic efforts of Pastor C. Frank Phillips brought huge numbers of new parishioners to St. John Cantius. Dedicated to their beautiful church, they raised funds and donated their own work toward its restoration. What you see today is its original glory. Watch this moving story here.
St. John Cantius Church Photo by Alexandra Eddy