Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1976. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“Mary's Church is a Roman Catholic church in Cincinnati's historic Over-The-Rhine neighborhood. It is the oldest continually-used house of worship in Cincinnati.”
Wikipedia article Old St. Mary's Church (Cincinnati, Ohio), CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 314 National Register listings in Hamilton County · listed in 1976 · category: Building · one of 9 National Historic Landmarks in Hamilton County.
National Register reference number.76001439- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
The reader looks forward to this, the first history of Cincinnati that has yet found itself in print. The writers look back across its half-century of chapters and the century of years embraced by its annals, and have, chiefest of all, to regret many unavoidable errors, both of omission and commission. The more important of these, it is hoped, will appear in our page of errata; but there are still many, doubtless, that have escaped the compilers' attention. In a few cases, discrepancies appear between their statements and those of an extract immediately following. In those instances they must assure the reader that the former rest upon an authority believed to be superior to the other in regard to the matter in hand; but time and space could not always be taken for the discussion and settlement of points concerning which there are variant reports. In all really important matters, they believe the history will be found quite trustworthy, especially when corrected from the page of errata.
Within the decade whose annals have just been passed in review, fell the birth of Cincinnati township, to which was entrusted, for almost twelve years, the government of Cincinnati village, which it of course contained. The township was created, after Columbia, by the court of general quarter sessions of the peace, which then had jurisdiction in these matters, in 1791. To the time of the erection of these townships, the whole county, which contained but a few hundred white inhabitants, was most conveniently governed as one municipality.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 5,852 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Old St. Mary's Church, School and Rectory between 1819 and
1975: 2,846 Fungi, 1,709 Animalia, 948 Plantae, 298 Protozoa, 32 Unrecorded, 18 Chromista, 1 Bacteria. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A Schwartz, A. Braun, A. F. Braun and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
2 workings within 5 miles of Old St. Mary's Church, School and Rectory: 2 unknowns.
None of them still produces. What was taken out: Tin, Lead, Antimony, Zirconium. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Cincinnati, the town this property stands in, in 70 storm reports between 1994 and 2025: 25 thunderstorm wind, 17 hail, 14 flash flood, 7 flood.
The reports record 1 injury. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
Numerous roads were flooded throughout the Cincinnati area and some basements were flooded. Flooding also caused some damage at Reading High School and Whitaker Elementary School.
Lightning struck a home causing a fire in the attic, which spread toward the second floor before being extinguished. Significant fire and water damage occurred to the home.
High water was reported on several roads in the downtown Cincinnati area and the near West Side. A retaining wall collapsed onto a roadway near the intersection of State Avenue and Ernst Street and a building was flooded on Poplar Street. Also, an apartment basement flooded on Linn Street and one resident needed to be rescued.
14 papers published in this town,
digitised by the Library of Congress and free to read: 0 issues,
0 pages. Every page is searchable, so a name or a street can be
looked for directly in what the town printed about itself at the time.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
3,779 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
The exterior of Old St. Mary's Church is essentially simple, characterized by arched front entrances, the main entrance placed at the base of the square clock- three stage clock tower rises above a simple Greek-revival styled entablature. In contrast to the simple exterior, Old Saint Mary's Church has a very elaborate wood carvings of Our Lady of Lourdes and the Sorrowful Mother, both were installed is given to the two side altars, however neither the arch nor the recess is ready for occupancy in 1844. It is 70' long and 30' wide, containing four large room for an office building for the church. CONDITION DATE DETERIORATED MOVED XALTERED story building has a gable roof. The brick is painted white, just as the church. stage, one clock on each face.
Above this is a two-stage octagonal portion X_EXCELLENT tall, round arched windows which have a simple tracery design in the arch. The CHECK ONE windows on the third. The doorway is placed to the left. Plain stone lintels, and included the installation of gas lighting, new heating system, new pews ( the old building is tall and narrow. Also built of brick, the three story, three bays wide interior, embracing floral design, and paintings of various Doctors of the Church, ones were put in the choir loft),hardwood floors were laid in the aisles, and It was cast by Levi Coffin.The tower clocks have original faces and mechanisms.
- UNALTERED Each door in the rear of the church has its own vestibule, the center one being the influx ofparishioners in the early days of St.Mary's necessitated the addition - UNEXPOSED The cornerstone of the school was laid in 1843 by Reverend Henni.The school was -GOOD -RUINS -FAIR Greek revival and simplified:German Baroque elements in brick.
which retained a Germanic culture within its environs for nearly a century. Since services in Hungarian, French, German, Spanish, the Old Church Latin, and English. St. Claire, the Revolutionary War figure, and first governor of the Northwest later to become the first Bishop of the Diocese of Milwaukee, organized the new parish and the construction of the church. A German immigrant, Franz Ignatz much of the work themselves. At the completion, the church was 142' long and 66' participated in the consecration ceremony.
In contrast to the buildings very simple exterior, the interior is elaborately to the church was a large oil painting of "The Immaculate Conception", a work of the eminent German artist from Munich, Franz Xavier Glink, whose works were honored 1400-1499 1700-1799 RELIGION AGRICULTURE ARCHEOLOGY-HISTORIC ECONOMICS POLITICS/GOVERNMENT THEATER PERIOD TRANSPORTATION COMMUNICATIONS ENGINEERING ART PHILOSOPHY BUILDER/ARCHITECT SIGNIFICANCE LITERATURE XARCHITECTURE INVENTION ARCHEOLOGY-PREHISTORIC SCULPTURE _EDUCATION _EXPLORATION/SETTLEMENT settled exclusively by German immigrants who developed a self-sustaining community as an orientation center familiarizing the new Americans with the country and Old Saint Mary's Church is the oldest church now standing in Cincinnati.The _COMMERCE SCIENCE providing religious services and education to the German immigrants and later Ground for the church buildings was purchased from the estate of General Arthur in the Munich Art Academy.
its founding St.Mary's has served the social needs of the community; initially _CONSERVATION only today's immigrants are the people from Appalachia and southern states. school and parish house compliment the church. wide and had a steeple that was built around one great tree trunk rising 170' _1500-1599 _1600-1699 INDUSTRY -1800-1899 Church and school were built in the area known as Over the Rhine",an area -1900- Territory.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 76001439, 35 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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