Saturday, January 21, 2017

inSPIREd Sunday





Sally and Beth host inSPIREd Sunday! Sundays in my City My Sunday Photo


January 2017 - San Antonio TX

We stumbled upon this church as we headed to the Alamo.


The St. Joseph Catholic Church is a Roman Catholic parish church in downtown San Antonio. The Gothic Revival house of worship was the fourth Catholic parish in the city.

The church is an example of what the Chinese describe as a nail house; when the church refused to sell to a property developer a large shopping mall was constructed around it.





In 1944, Joske's department store (whose site would eventually become part of the Shops at Rivercenter complex) offered to buy the church grounds in order to develop it commercially. Parishioners unanimously refused the offer to move from the site and so instead Joske's built around the three sides of the church, earning the church from locals the moniker "St. Joske's". A restoration was commenced in 1981 Spanish-language masses are held with mariachi music and the San Antonio Liederkranz sings once a month.


Here is a photo from Wikipedia to show an aerial view.




The church occupies the probable second site of the Missión San Antonio de Valero (later known as the Alamo), before it was moved in 1724 to its present location. The cornerstone of the church was laid in 1868, and it was finally completed in 1871.It served a large and growing community of German immigrants. In the 1870s, Friar Henry Pfefferkorn, founder of the Liederkranz (male singing choir), painted the Annunciation and Assumption murals on the side altars. A steeple was added in 1898.


Stained glass windows, imported from the Emil Frei Art Glass Factory in Munich, Germany, were installed in 1902.















11 comments:

  1. Hello Jackie!
    Thank you very much, from the Sunday morning I watch the beautiful architecture and wonderful church. I saw a wonderful sculpture Pieta.
    Hmm, a pity that the church absorbed contemporary architecture.

    Your photos are excellent !!!!
    Blessed Sunday :)
    Lucja

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  2. Oi, that is so cruel of the mall to surround the poor church like that! And the stained glass windows get almost no sunlight, I imagine.

    The cornerstone "Siehe die Wohnung Gottes bei den Menschen" seems to be from Revelation 21:

    Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; 3 and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
    “BEHOLD, THE DWELLING OF GOD IS WITH MEN.
    He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people,[a] and God himself will be with them;[b] 4 he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.”
    5 And he who sat upon the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.”

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  3. Oh my, what a gorgeous church with the city engulfing it. It must have been a lovely sight before those ugly buildings grew up around it.

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  4. A rose amoung thorns, it looks so out of place amung such ugliness

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  5. Beautiful #MySundayPhoto

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  6. It is a beautiful church. It speaks volumes of the pettiness of the developer that they enveloped the property with that.

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  7. A beautiful looking church

    Thank you for linking up

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  8. So beautiful and a wonderful history as to the modern mall built around. #MySundayPhoto

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