St. Joseph's Catholic Church (Springfield, Ohio)

St. Joseph's Church is a historic Catholic church in the city of Springfield, Ohio, United States. Established in the 1880s to serve southeastern Springfield's growing Catholic population, it uses a tall Romanesque Revival church building, which was designed by a leading city architect; the building has been named a historic site.Early yearsAs late as 1830, not a single Catholic was resident in Clark County, but twenty Catholic families moved to Springfield between 1835 and 1845, and by 1850 there were approximately seventy Catholic families in the city. In 1849, the Bishop of Cincinnati created Springfield's first parish, Saint Raphael. By the 1880s, large numbers of Catholics were living on Springfield's southeastern side, and preparations for a separate parish began with the purchase of three lots of land in 1881. A parish school building was begun in 1882, and the new Church of St. Joseph was created a separate parish in the same year. By late 1883, the school was open, and C.M. Berding was appointed the first parish priest on New Year's Day 1884. During his ministry, construction began on the present building in 1892; extensive debt was taken on, but the work of Berding and his two successors saw the building raised to architectural grandeur and the debt reduced to nearly nothing. By 1908, the parish comprised four hundred member families, and the school enrolled approximately four hundred and fifty children.