St. Vincent de Paul Church / St. Vincent de Paul Church

St. Vincent de Paul parish, established in 1851 by Bishop Peter Paul Lefevere, once included all of Oakland County and parts of Genesee, Lapeer, and Macomb Counties. The parish’s first house of worship, the Academy Building, was first a private school and later a branch of the University of Michigan. In 1866 the church was moved from North Saginaw Street to Oakland Avenue at Lafayette. The parish grew as increasing numbers of Irish and German Catholic immigrants came to Pontiac to work in industry and farming. The Reverend Fridolin Baumgartner, pastor from 1876 to 1894, organized the fund-raising for and the construction of the present church. Nearly five thousand people celebrated as its cornerstone was laid on September 6, 1885. Detroit architects John M. Donaldson and Walter Meier designed this Victorian Gothic church. Upon its dedication on September 18, 1887, a fourteen-coach excursion train brought spectators and clergy from Detroit to Pontiac to celebrate. Bishop Caspar Henry Borgess and Father Fridolin Baumgartner presided over the ceremony. A sixty-six hundred-pound bell, cast by H. Stuckstede and Company, was installed in the bell tower of the church in 1890. The St. Frederick School building, added in 1897, was replaced by the present structure in 1923. The school was staffed by the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Monroe, until it closed in 1969. The rectory was built in 1895, the parish hall in 1911.