FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 28, 2007
CONTACT: Molly Dannenmaier
Director of Marketing and Public Relations,
409-765-7834
molly.dannenmaier@galvestonhistory.org

PHOTOS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

Historic 1859 St. Joseph’s Church to be Open for Public Tours on New Year’s Day

The historic 1859 St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, the oldest wooden church building in Galveston and the oldest German Catholic church in Texas, will be open to the public on New Year’s Day, Tuesday, January 1, 2008, from noon to 3 p.m.

Although it has been and continues to be open by arrangement and for special events, the church is not regularly open for tours. GHF volunteer Leslie Burgess, who attended the church as a child with her aunt, will serve as docent for the New Year’s Day tour, to communicate her knowledge of and affection for the building, one of the four oldest churches in Galveston.

Galveston Historical Foundation (GHF) operates St. Joseph’s as an event venue for concerts, meetings, weddings, lectures and other private events. Upon its de-sanctification by the Diocese of Galveston-Houston in 1968, GHF took on the building’s stewardship, raising the funds and organizing the volunteer efforts to keep the building at the northwest corner of 22nd Street and Avenue K in good repair and available for community use.

With an elegant and spare gothic revival exterior, the church is surprisingly colorful and ornate on the inside, featuring painted wood walls, the original grain-painted cedar pews, hand-carved altars, plaster stations of the cross and a beautifully painted coffered ceiling. German inscriptions and painted symbols are reminders of a time when German immigrants represented nearly half the population of Galveston.

Designed and built by German immigrant architect Joseph Bleicke and dedicated to St. Joseph in 1860, the structure was nearly destroyed in the Great Storm of 1900. It was rebuilt and expanded by famed Galveston architect Nicholas Clayton, and remains today in form and furnishing much as it was a century ago.

The New Year’s Day Tour of St. Joseph’s Church will be $3 for adults, $1 for children 7-12, and free for those under 7. For more information, contact Jami Durham at 409-762-3933.