| Additional Information: | A 'site file' exists for this property. It contains additional information such as correspondence, newspaper clippings, or historical information. It is a public record and may be viewed in person at the Wisconsin Historical Society, State Historic Preservation Office.
2015- Holy Communion Lutheran Church is a large Neo-Gothic church designed by the architectural firm Ritcher and Eiler and constructed in 1928, as presented in its cornerstone. It displays a cruciform plan and is clad in limestone block with a slate roof. The church features large, arched, stained-glass windows with tracery details in each of the four gables, as well as along the east and west (side) elevations. A main entrance is centered on the front (south) facade and consists of two wood double doors surrounded by a stone portal with carved archivolts, a lintel, and tympanum. The tympanum reads, “God is in his holy Temple/let all the earth bow down before him.” To either side of the portal are sunken lancet windows, and above it is a one-and-one-half-story, stained-glass window capped by a stone hood mold and flanked by shallow stone piers. A Celtic cross is located at the apex of the gable. Inside the church is an angel sculpture at the baptismal font created by acclaimed early-nineteenth-century Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen.
A c.1960 rear addition connects this structure to Martin Luther College. It is two stories, clad in cream brick, topped with a flat roof, and barely visible from the front or side elevations of the complex.
In 1902 members of Racine’s Danish Lutheran Emmaus Church, led by Reverend Christ H. Jensen, incorporated as the Luther High School and College Association with the purpose of founding a secondary school for Danish Lutheran students in the Midwest. They hired architect David R. Davis and built the structure, which served as an educational facility until 1914. Subsequently, the Luther College property served as a boarding home until the Holy Communion congregation, formerly the English Evangelical Church of the Holy Communion, purchased it in 1925. They remodeled the former college building into an educational and administrative center for the parish. By 1928 Holy Communion contracted Ritcher and Eiler, a Pennsylvania-based firm known for their ecclesiastical architecture, to design a church adjacent to the school building. The church complex is still in use by that parish today.
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When this church was organized, in 1898, there were already nine flourishing Lutheran congregations in Racine, but they conducted services in the Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and German languages. This became the first English Lutheran church in town, and it held early services at the YMCA building. In 1925 the congregation purchased the "Luther Hill" property and erected this fine perpendicular Gothic edifice in limestone with a slate roof.
POINTED ARCHED WINDOWS W/ORNATE TRACERY. PILASTERS AND BUTTRESSES. ORNATE TUDOR ARCHED WINDOWS IN GABLES. |
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| Bibliographic References: | Black, David R. “Luther College – Holy Communion Parish House.” Prepared for the Racine Landmarks Preservation Commission, 1976.
Burckel, Nicholas C., ed. Racine: Growth and Change in a Wisconsin County. Racine, Wis.: Racine County Board of Supervisors, 1977. 429.
ZIMMERMANN, RUSSELL "THE HERITAGE GUIDEBOOK" (HERITAGE BANKS 1976).
Racine Landmarks brochure, 2003.
"Architecture/History Survey: W. 6th Street Bridge over Root River, Racine Wisconsin." WHS Project #16-1087/RA. August 2015. Prepared by Mead & Hunt, Inc. |
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