Church of St. Agnes

The Church of Saint Agnes is an onion-domed church building designed by George Ries, built 1901–1912 for the German-speaking Austro-Hungarian population of immigrants in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.The parish was founded in 1887 by Archbishop John Ireland, who wanted to serve German-speaking immigrants who were settling in the Frogtown neighborhood of St. Paul to find work with the Great Northern Railway. The first building was designed by George Bergmann, a St. Paul architect who was also a parishioner. The current building was begun under the direction of Reverend James Trobec, who later became the third bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saint Cloud. Two competing designs were submitted by architects Hermann Kretz and George Ries, and the design by Ries was selected. Ries modeled his design after Stift Schlägl, a Praemonstratensian monastery in Northern Austria near Aigen im Mühlkreis. The Baroque architecture style was familiar to immigrants who came from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and southern Germany. It is also influenced by Beaux-Arts ideals of balance and symmetry.