| Additional Information: | Surveyed 2021: The complex containing these two buildings (including the church AHI #25989) is located on the east side of STH 42, both of which are oriented on a southwest/northeast axis. Historically known as the St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, and today as the Stella Maris Catholic Church in Egg Harbor, the structure is set back from the highway by about sixty-five feet while the rectory’s setback is about sixty feet.
The rectory (AHI #243010) postdates the church by about eleven years, but very much mirrors the church’s style and building materials. Generally constructed in the American Foursquare style, the two-story house rises from a stone foundation, above which is a six-course water table. Prominent quarried stone columns in each of the house’s four corners then rise the height of the structure, as do less prominent, symmetrically spaced stone columns on each of the four walls, between which are paired, one-over-one-light windows placed. Where windows are not located, all space between the quarried stone columns is infilled with split granite boulders. The house is sheltered by a hipped roof with a two-light, hipped roof dormer centered in both its southwest and northwest planes. An open porch supported by short, quarried stone columns was historically found on the southwest primary façade as well as the southeast side of the house. The porch was enclosed and is now sheathed with wide clapboard siding, as are the spaces between the support columns below. The main entrance is accessed by replacement stone steps and is left (northwest) of center. One two-light window is to the left of the doorway as are two such windows to the right (southeast). The enclosed porch on the southeast sidewall claims five, two-light windows. Also on the grounds is a garage and a statue of the Virgin Mary, among other features.
Families were settling in Egg Harbor in the 1850s and 1860s. By the late 1860s, Roman Catholic priests began visiting the settlement and offering services. The community’s first Roman church was a small log structure built in 1878, followed in 1888 by a larger structure. As the number of families in Egg Harbor grew, so did the need for a new, even larger church, construction on which started in 1909. Pledges of labor, or $100, toward the new facility were received from fifty-two families. The structure was not yet finished in October 1910, but it was then that the church’s dedicatory service was held. The first resident priest arrived in 1918, at which time the rectory was built immediately adjacent to, and just northwest of the church building. It was designed so that its exterior appearance matched that of the church. The rectory, now used largely for office space, was renovated in 1968/1969, as was the church in 1973/1974. The church received a new alter in 1991/1992. |
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