The parish of St. Barbara, called “Little Poland” due to its patriotic activity, was the second parish organized in Bridgeport, and it was derived from the parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Its organizer was Fr. Stanislaw Nawrocki. In October 1909 he purchased a plot of land, on which a year later a school building was erected, with an auditorium on the ground floor where Masses were celebrated temporarily. In 1910, the community built a presbytery and a convent for the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Third Order of St. Francis of Stevens Point, Wisconsin, who ran the school. All the buildings were consecrated by Bishop Paweł Rhode.

In November 1910 Fr. Nawrocki’s brother Antoni became the parish priest and was given the task of building the church. The design was made by the architectural company Worthmann & Steinbach and was approved already in March 1911. Thanks to the financial support of the parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Help the construction works started in June the following year after the ceremony of laying the cornerstone. The church was dedicated on 5 June, 1914 by Bishop Edward Kozłowski, born in Tarnów, who had come to the USA as a 25-year-old man and in 1913 became an auxiliary bishop in Milwaukee.

In the years 1922-1925 a new presbytery and school were built and the convent of the sisters was extended. These were the last construction investments, even though the parish life flourished in the following decades, involving also patriotic and cultural activity. Performances, social evenings and celebrations were organized to commemorate national events. It happened that during the marches uniformed societies presented themselves on horseback. Students’ sports teams were very active. During World War II there was a Red Cross unit in the parish, and volunteers were recruited from the community. After the end of the war a memorial square was created to commemorate the dead, but it is now barely noticeable among the parish buildings.

Sadly, with the collapse of industry the district began to decline, and so did the Polish community. In the 1970s and 1980s Latino and Chinese immigrants started to replace the Poles, also due to the proximity to Chicago’s China Town. The functioning of the parish and school was hampered by the proximity to the limestone quarry, as the noise and dust disturbed the residents. Nevertheless, St. Barbara’s parish has survived, even though several churches have been closed in Bridgeport since the 1980s. Currently, its community consists of about 600 families, and the ministry is carried out in English only. The last Polish Mass was celebrated in 1997.

St. Barbara’s is a brick church with a steel frame designed for 1200 seats. From the architectural point of view it is undoubtedly the most interesting church building among the Polish Cathedrals in Chicago. It was built on a central plan, but its outline is different outside (a square with truncated front corners) and inside (an octagon), with a shallow transept and a protuberant chancel. This gives an extraordinarily picturesque effect, reinforced by an octagonal tented roof over the main body, which used to be crowned with a polygonal openwork 27-meter-high tower. The roof imitates the dome effect, contrasted with a Classically solved, towerless façade with a giant order of pilasters.

In the year of its dedication (1914) the church was equipped with pews and stained glass windows, mainly depicting saints, including the patron saints of Poland. Three altars (the main one as well as the Lord Jesus and Our Lady) from the Chicago workshop Daprato Statuary Company were made of wood and polychrome stucco. In 1938, the vault of the temple was decorated with paintings of the Evangelists, and the main body with pictures of St. Joseph and St. Anthony (renovated in 2012). The church was renovated in 1957-1959, during the preparations for the golden anniversary of the parish, and new stations of the Way of the Cross, a baptismal font and new confessionals were installed. Wardrobes for chasubles were also purchased for the sacristy, where the procession banner of the society “Bractwo Niewiast Różańca Świętego” (Confraternity of the Women of the Holy Rosary) has been preserved to this day. In the main altar a painting of St. Barbara was replaced with a statue of the saint. Candelabras in the shape of angels were removed from the side pedestals of the altar, and replaced with the statues of St. Anne teaching Mary and St. Joseph. The temple also houses the statues of St. Anthony, St. Francis, Christ in the Garden and Pieta. All of them were made by the Daprato Statuary Company

Particular mention is due to a group of sculptures showing St. Teresa of Lisieux in front of Mary holding the Child Jesus with a cross in the background. The Carmelite was depicted while receiving from Our Lady a veil falling down the cross and filled with roses. On the one hand, it emphasizes the religious spirituality of the nun and the spiritual and physical sufferings she experienced, and on the other hand, it refers to the words she uttered at the time of her death: “After my death, I will let fall a shower of roses. I will spend my heaven doing good upon earth.” The mystic, beatified in 1923 and canonized two years later, was proclaimed the patron saint of the missions by Pope Pius XI in 1927. Very soon her cult became popular in the USA, including Chicago, especially among immigrants and the clergy who worked among them.

In 1982, when the parish priest was the last priest of Polish origin, Norman M. Czajka, a copy of the painting of Our Lady of Czestochowa was placed in the temple. It was painted by Zbigniew Gizella, a Cracow artist and a graduate of the Cracow academy. Repairs and restoration works were carried out in the 1990s. Stainedglass windows from the closed College Seminary in Niles were installed in the front windows. They depict the Holy Family, Mary Magdalene washing Christ’s feet, Entrance to Jerusalem and Ascension. Three bells from 1914 have been preserved in the tower.

Chronology

1910 - erection of the parish of St. Barbara

1910 - construction of the presbytery and convent for the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis

1912 - consecration of the cornerstone for the church

1914 - dedication of the church

1922-1925 - construction of a new presbytery and school and extending the sisters’ convent

1938 - painting works in the church

1970 - a church fire, as a result of which the tower was lowered

Text originally published in a book issued by the POLONIKA Institute.
Katarzyna Chrudzimska-Uhera, Anna Sylwia Czyż, Jacek Gołębiowski, Bartłomiej Gutowski, Polish parishes and churches in Chicago, Warszawa 2019, pp. 281-288.