Cincinnati is blessed to have retained many of its old churches. Stunning bell towers, vaulted ceilings and stained-glass windows. Some are among the oldest buildings in the city.
It’s a bit tricky to say which are the oldest churches. Would that be church buildings, or congregations? What about church buildings that still stand, but are used for other purposes?
Take the old St. Paul’s Catholic Church at 12th and Pendleton streets in Over-the-Rhine, for instance. Built in 1850 and reconstructed in 1900 after a fire, it closed in 1974 and the red-brick building with the handsome bell tower is now the Bell Event Centre.
Here are the city’s oldest houses of worship.
Cincinnati’s oldest congregations
A few church congregations date back to the frontier days when a dozen settlers met in private homes or in the open air, sitting on fallen trees. Worshippers commonly brought loaded rifles to church for protection.
The first church services in the Northwest Territory were led by a Baptist preacher in the settlement Columbia (now the Cincinnati neighborhood Columbia Tusculum). The congregation of Columbia Baptist Church was organized Jan. 20, 1790, just weeks after Losantiville was renamed Cincinnati.
A pillar monument and plaque mark the site near Lunken Airport where the church’s first meeting house was built in 1792.
Since many of the pioneers were Presbyterian, a Presbyterian church was founded in Cincinnati on Oct. 16, 1790, a few months later than Columbia Baptist Church. But the First Presbyterian Church was the first to erect a church, near Fourth and Main streets, built in 1791.
Both congregations survive today but have changed names and locations.
Due to flooding, Columbia Baptist Church resettled to higher ground at Duck Creek and Edwards roads in 1808 with a new name, Duck Creek Baptist Church. After moving again to Mount Lookout in 1875, the church relocated to Hyde Park in 1904 and was renamed Hyde Park Baptist Church.
In 2021, the congregation moved into the renovated Norwood Baptist Church building at 2042 Weyer Ave. in Norwood, and settled on yet another new name, Grace and Truth Church.
First Presbyterian worshipped at Fourth and Main until 1933, when the congregation voted to merge with the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant and moved to their Gothic chapel at Eighth and Elm streets. Covenant-First Presbyterian Church, built in 1875, still overlooks Piatt Park.
Columbia was originally separate from Cincinnati, and Norwood is its own city, so that makes First Presbyterian Cincinnati’s oldest congregation, while Columbia Baptist Church is the oldest in the region.
Cincinnati’s oldest churches
Old St. Mary’s Church at 13th and Clay streets is Cincinnati’s oldest church, dedicated July 3, 1842. St. Marien Kirche, as it is known in German, was built to accommodate the influx of German Catholics in Over-the-Rhine in the 1840s.
The Greek Revival church was designed by architect Franz Ignatz Erd. To save money, parishioners built the church themselves using stones baked in their own ovens.
Old St. Mary’s still holds mass in English, Latin and German every week.
A few of the older churches still operating:
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: These are the oldest churches in Cincinnati
Reporting by Jeff Suess, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
