Saint Leonard Catholic Church (Madison, Nebraska)

Saint Leonard Catholic Church is a Roman Catholic church in the city of Madison, in the state of Nebraska in the Midwestern United States. Built in 1913, it has been described as "an outstanding example of the Romanesque Revival style of architecture."

St. Leonard's parish, named after Saint Leonard of Port Maurice, was organized in 1879. A wood-frame church was built in 1881 on the outskirts of Madison, and moved into the city in 1898. In 1902, the basement of the current church was built, and the congregation moved into it, converting the old church to a school. When funds allowed, the basement was extended, and the current brick church completed in 1913.

In 1989, the church, its 1912 rectory, and the rectory's garage were listed in the National Register of Historic Places, as the work of noted Nebraska architect Jacob M. Nachtigall. A pupil of Thomas Rogers Kimball, Nachtigall designed a number of Catholic churches and other buildings in the state, several of which are also listed in the National Register.

History The first white settlers to occupy the site of Madison were a party led by Henry Mitchell Barnes, who settled near the junction of Union and Taylor Creeks in 1867. Growth of the new settlement was rapid; in particular, there was an influx of German families from Wisconsin. The town of Madison was officially platted by Barnes in 1870 or 1871. In 1875, it became the county seat of Madison County, and in 1876 it was incorporated. The Union Pacific Railroad reached Madison in 1879; by 1880, the town had a population of about 300.

The first Christian services held in Madison were Presbyterian, taking place in Barnes's and other homes. A Presbyterian congregation was organized in 1870, and a church built in 1872. A Methodist circuit encompassing Madison and Antelope counties was organized in 1871; a parsonage was built in Madison ca. 1875, and a church begun in 1877. A Lutheran congregation may have formed in Madison in about 1875, although early records are incomplete; the congregation was initially served by the pastor of a Lutheran church in Green Garden Precinct, located about seven miles () southwest of Madison. It was formally organized in 1885, and a church built in Madison in 1887.

The first Catholic settlers in Madison County homesteaded near present-day Battle Creek, northwest of Madison, in the late 1860s. In 1874, they organized a parish; in 1874–75, they built St. Patrick's Church, the county's first Catholic church. In 1877, they wrote to Bishop James O'Connor of the Diocese of Omaha, asking that a priest be assigned to visit the church at intervals until a permanent priest could be assigned to the parish; in apparent response to this, Franciscan missionaries based in Columbus were given the responsibility of providing for Madison County.

1879–1900

In 1879, a group of Catholic residents of the Madison area met to plan the building of a church. At the meeting, a total of $426.75 was subscribed; additional contributions of $322.86 were obtained from citizens of Madison. In January 1880, the church's trustees spent $100 for five acres () on a hill at the southeastern edge of town. In the spring, a party of parishioners drove their ox teams to Wisner, about northeast of Madison, for the first load of lumber for the new church. The frame structure, with a capacity of 100, was completed in November 1881; the total cost was $957.61, leaving $208.00 owed to the carpenter. The new church was dedicated to St. Leonard of Port Maurice, an 18th-century Franciscan priest, preacher, ascetic, and writer venerated as the patron saint of parish missions.

In 1882, a parcel of land southeast of the church was purchased for a cemetery; a one-year-old child buried in September of that year became its first occupant. The cemetery was fenced in 1883. In 1884, the church was enlarged: a sacristy and a room for the priest were added to the east end, and a steeple to the west end.

As Madison's population grew, the church became too small for the expanding congregation. In addition, its location outside of the city was inconvenient for many parishioners. In 1898, a tract of land inside Madison was bought. Rather than building a new church at the time, the parish elected to move the old one to the new site. The church was moved in two parts; when it was reconstructed, another section was added between them, increasing the building's seating capacity to 180. The church on the new site was dedicated in November 1898.

1900–1913

In the early 20th century, the parish decided that the old church should be remodelled into a school and a convent for the teachers, and that a new church should be built. Brother Leonard Darscheid, a Franciscan architect, drew up plans for a church; but financial constraints precluded its construction. Instead, a temporary basement church was built just west of the old church building. It is not known whether the design of the basement used Darscheid's plans. Construction of the basement church began in July 1902, services were held there beginning in September 1902, and it was dedicated in February 1903.

The school opened in September 1903, with two classrooms staffed by two members of the Sisters of the Presentation of Dubuque, Iowa. 66 students were enrolled, including a number of non-Catholics, owing to overcrowding in the public schools. To make more space available, a basement was dug in 1904. In 1910, a third classroom was added.

In 1910, the Franciscans turned the management of the parish over to the Diocese of Omaha. In October of that year, Edward S. Muenich became the first diocesan pastor of St. Leonard's.

Muenich embarked upon an extensive building campaign, for which he retained Omaha architect Jacob M. Nachtigall. Born in Germany in 1874, Nachtigall had immigrated to the United States with his family in 1883. Initially working as a laborer in Omaha, he had served as a draftsman for that city's 1898 Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition. He had then worked as a draftsman for Omaha architect Thomas Rogers Kimball from 1900 to 1908; during this time, Kimball had designed the city's St. Cecilia's Cathedral. In 1909, Nachtigall had opened his own architectural office.

In 1911, a two-story eight-room brick rectory designed by Nachtigall was begun; it was completed and furnished in 1912, at a cost of $10,374. In the fall of 1912, the church basement was extended by over 50 percent.

1913–1946

In 1913, a Romanesque Revival church designed by Nachtigall was built on the existing basement. The cornerstone was laid and construction begun in May; the church was completed by the end of November, and formally dedicated on December 4. The cost of construction was about $75,000. While the church was under construction, Catholic services were held in Madison's armory.

The new church had a seating capacity of 700. In its tower was a clock with four six-foot () dials, and a peal of three bells, contributed by the citizens of Madison; beside summoning the parishioners to Mass, these rang the quarter-hours, marking time for the residents of the city and the surrounding rural areas.

While the urban United States experienced an economic boom during the 1920s, the agricultural sector of the country experienced a depression. Disruption of European agriculture by World War I had produced high prices for farm commodities, and it had been thought that Europe's recovery would be slow and that the high prices would persist. This gave rise to a bubble in farmland prices, which burst when the rapid postwar recovery of European agriculture drove commodity prices down again. At the same time, increasing mechanization reduced the need for farm labor, pushing agricultural wages downward and rural unemployment upward. Madison and St. Leonard's parish suffered from this agricultural depression and from the Great Depression of the 1930s. During this time, the parish's population remained more or less stable: in 1918, it consisted of 440 individuals; in 1929, 452.

In 1926, the parish was forced to close its school, since the Presentation Sisters were no longer able to staff it. The school re-opened in 1931, with 60 pupils taught by Missionary Benedictine Sisters based in Norfolk.

The onset of World War II once again brought prosperity to rural Nebraska, and it persisted into the 1950s. St. Leonard's paid off its remaining debt, held a mortgage-burning ceremony in 1946, and began raising funds for a new school.

1946–present

The cornerstone for a new school was laid in November 1953. A property adjoining the new school site was bought, and the house standing upon it converted to a convent for the nuns staffing the school. The new building was completed and opened for classes in August 1954; the old school, which had begun life as the first St. Leonard's Church, was demolished that fall, and its site became a parking lot.

The Benedictine Sisters withdrew from the school in 1978, prompting the closing of the seventh and eighth grades. The school continued to offer grades 1–6, taught by three lay instructors.

Beginning in the early 1990s, Madison experienced a large influx of Hispanics. In 1990, Madison County's population was 2% Hispanic; by 2010, the number had increased to 13%. In the city of Madison, whose single largest employer was a meatpacking plant with over 1000 employees, operated by IBP and then by Tyson Foods, the increase was far greater: the Hispanic fraction of the population rose from less than 1% in 1980 to 48.8% in 2010, as the Spanish-speaking population increased and the white non-Hispanic population fell. By 2011, an estimated two-thirds of St. Leonard's parishioners were Hispanic. Beginning in 1991, the archdiocese assigned Spanish-speaking priests to the parish, and both English- and Spanish-language services were offered.

The centennial of the church building was celebrated in December 2013, at a bilingual Mass conducted by Elden Curtiss, archbishop emeritus of the Archdiocese of Omaha.

Architecture

In 1989, three of the parish's buildings—the church, the rectory, and the rectory's garage—were added to the National Register of Historic Places, as the work of distinguished Nebraska architect Jacob M. Nachtigall. Beside St. Leonard's, Nachtigall designed a number of other notable buildings in Nebraska, many of them Catholic; these include St. Mary of the Assumption Church in Dwight (1914), St. Anthony's Church in Cedar Rapids (1919), St. Bonaventure's Church in Raeville (1919), Immaculate Conception Church in Omaha (1926), and Father Flanagan's House at Boys Town (1927).

Church

The church is oriented east–west, with the main entrance facing westward. It is just over long from east to west; wide from north to south. The walls are made of mosaic gray pressed brick trimmed with Bedford stone, rising from a rock-faced limestone foundation, and are about high. The peak of the roof is about above ground level.

At the west end of the church, a belltower rises above the main entrance. The tower is topped with a copper dome, capped with a cross. It contains three bells, weighing . The tower's clock has four six-foot () dials. Below the tower, a flight of seventeen steps ascends to the church's main entrance, via a set of double doors through a semicircular archway.

The church's north and south walls are supported by a series of buttresses. Seven windows run along each wall. A line of brick corbels runs along the walls below the eaves. Near the east end of the church, a short transept extends a short distance outward. At the church's east end, beyond the transept, is a semicircular apse with a conical roof, topped with a six-paned conical skylight.

Interior