St. Joseph’s Catholic Church 50th Anniversary – October 1946

Back in October 1946, Lorain’s St. Joseph’s Catholic Church on Reid Avenue was celebrating its 50th Anniversary of its 1896 founding. The event was featured on the front page of the Lorain Journal (above) of October 26, 1946.

As the article mentions, the church was an offshoot of St. Mary’s. It notes, “St. Joseph’s was organized back in 1896 by Rev. Fr. Charles Reichlin. Many of the old, bowed, gray-haired men and women tomorrow at church will recall that when St. Mary’s church was destroyed by fire in 1895, a group of German-speaking members petitioned for a separate parish.”

My father’s Grandpa Esterle and his family became members of St. Joseph shortly after they came to this country from Austria-Hungary in 1905, which makes sense since German was spoken in his household. (He later left the church when his young wife died, and the church thought that his three young children – my father’s mother and two uncles – would be better off in the custody of the church.)

Anyway, the beautiful church survived all the way to 2010, when, sadly, it was closed as a result of the church closings and mergers ordered by the Cleveland Catholic Diocese.