St. Josaphat Basilica’s Spectacular History. Milwaukee's Most Wonderful Mystery.
St. Josaphat Basilica’s Spectacular History.
Milwaukee Most Wonderful Mysteries.
On our trip to St. Josaphat Basilica we found out that it was just as spectacular in person as it is in photos. The problem is Wikipedia doesn't do justice to how spectacular it really is. The basilica was commissioned by Pastor Wilhelm Grutza 1896. The new Basilica was set in motion to replace the local Polish church that was too small to fit the 12,000 Polish immigrants that flooded its holy halls each service. That's a lot of people right! The problem was finding building materials for a church that could house that many members. Pastor Grutza received word that a Post Office and a Customs House in Chicago were about to be demolished and bought 200,000 tons of scrap materials for $20,000. Which wasn't cheap, back in the 1800s 20,000 dollars would equal 800 million dollars today (that looks like this 800,000,000). If the church raised that much money from their members alone that's the first extraordinary feet for this church. The next unbelievable feet was getting 200,000 tons of materials from Chicago to Wisconsin. It literally took 500 railcars and an unknown number of ships to accomplish this. Now, remember we are talking about some really heavy building materials and some very fragile ones as well, like stone blocks of all shapes and all kinds of shapes and sizes of glass fixtures.
Now the next amazing thing that happened was getting the materials to the site and to able to put those pieces together. How to you move things that are that heavy and left it carefully in the air and place it gently together without killing yourself and everyone around you. In comes Jacob Leszcsyski to the rescue. He was the owner of a big coal company in the 1800s known as Leszczynski Coal Company, it's really a mystery but a pretty certain one that Leszczynski lent his tools to the church free of charge, the building across the street from the church was made of extra materials left over from making the church and sold to Mr. Leszczyski for 1 dollar. This building is now known as the FR. W.J. GRUTZA BUILDING. While at the basilica I saw this building from the step and took a picture because it seemed off to me. It didn't match any of the other buildings on that side of the street. It also looked like it was made out of the same materials as the church but there was no mention of it anywhere. I went home a researched a lot and found that it was made out of leftovers from the church. The building was used the same way it is today as a storefront with topside apartments. The church was unbelievably and rightfully grateful to Leszczynski who is buried in front of all of the holy men at the church cemetery with 17 members of his family. Leszczynski's plot as the largest cross on it and he even has his name on one of the stain glass windows at St. Josphats Basilica. The Church, unlike Wikipedia, gives credit where credit is do and most have been an amazing place to work and worship with all of those wonderful and strong willed people around.
Speaking of strong people the basilica had to be built right. Erhard Brielmaier Designed the basilica he was the best of the best back then and raised a lot of holy buildings and buildings in his time. If you wanted it done and wanted it done right Erhard was the guy to call. I mean come on he made a post office and customs house into one of the most stunning basilicas in America. When the church couldn't pay some of the workers Erhard paid them with his own money, also people mortgaged their homes to help pay as well. None of this would have really happened without workers, and you really won't believe who stacked all of this up right. It was the conjuration, that's right the members of the church built the basilica together not only did they put it together but only one person was fatally injured. Anton Kasprzyk was that person and there is a plaque in the church dedicated to him.
The stained glass was the first decoration placed in the basilica and it was shipped to Wisconsin from Austria.
The murals were painted by Gonippo Raggi, and Italian painter who was known for his painting in basilicas and church's throughout America. He also did the gold leafing throughout the basilica. Looking around at all of the gold leafing it must have taken him a long time.
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