In 1858, St. Boniface Roman Catholic Church was founded to serve German immigrants who settled in the St. Anthony area. Eleven years later a notice appeared in the December 4, 1869 issue of the German newspaper The Wanderer that construction was to begin on St. Joseph’s Church on Tenth Avenue and Second Street North on land donated by Martin Ferrant, an immigrant from Luxembourg who owned a great deal of land in Minneapolis. The small frame structure was blessed by Bishop Thomas L. Grace and attached to St Boniface as a mission church to service the spiritual and communal needs of Catholic immigrants from Germany, Austria, and Hungary. The church’s status as a mission came to an end in 1875, the same year the parish established a school. As the area around the church complex consisting of a school, convent and rectory became increasingly industrialized, a decision was made to move to 11th and Fourth Avenue North. The cornerstone for the new complex was laid by Bishop John Ireland on June 19, 1887 and the church was consecrated by Archbishop John Ireland on September 15, 1889. Designed by Minneapolis architect Carl Struck, it was a twin-towered German Romanesque Revival style edifice built of beige brick and brown-red sandstone. [Add Footnote: Struck, a Norwegian born architect, also designed Dania Hall and the Bardwell-Ferrant House in Minneapolis, both are on the National Register of Historic Places.] In 1908 a clubroom, billiard room, equipment for basketball and gymnastics were added; three bowling alleys were built several years later. A lumberman Oscar E. Decker donated land in 1910 for an athletic park at 11th and Lyndale Ave. North. Thus, St. Joseph became a neighborhood center assuming many of the functions of a Settlement House. Perhaps reflecting changes in the neighborhood and church’s ethnic identity, it is noted in the church’s “Timeline” that in 1928, “occasionally, a priest speaking Spanish and Italian visited”. By this time St. Joseph’s had 3,000 parishioners and 411 students in the school. St. Joseph remained on the Near North Side continuing to serve a parish that over the years underwent dramatic changes in its ethnic composition until its demolition in 1976 to make way for the North Side segment of Interstate 94.