Nearest city Milwaukee Architectural style Gothic Revival | Built 1889 NRHP Reference # 92000459 | |
 | ||
Location 804--816 W. Vliet St.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin Architect Herman Paul Schnetzky;
Eugene R. Liebert | ||
St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church (Evangelische Luth. St. Johanneskirche) is a church located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The complex is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was designated a Milwaukee Landmark.
Description
St. John's congregation was founded December 4, 1848, by German immigrants and is affiliated with the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS). Members of the church, along with neighboring Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church and Grace Lutheran, helped seed other Lutheran churches in the area, including St. Peter's. In the 1850s there were discussions to merge St. John's and Trinity, but theological differences prevented the merger.
The church was designed by German born architect Herman Paul Schnetzky, and his understudy Eugene R. Liebert, in Gothic Revival style and built in 1889. As with the Trinity Church building, it features landmark spires of unequal height and is considered to be one of the finest examples of German Lutheran church architecture in the United States. Other parts of the church complex were constructed in Queen Anne architectural style.
The church's organ was first built by Carl Barckhoff in 1890, and was rebuilt and enlarged by Wangerin-Weickhardt in 1919.
The two spires of St. John's rise 127 and 197 feet above Vliet St. The taller steeple houses three bells, weighing more than 6 tons.