St. Hyacinth Catholic Church

The first Polish immigrants came to Detroit during the 1840s. In 1872, 70 Polish families lived in the city. By 1907 when St. Hyacinth Church was founded, Detroit Poles numbered over 60,000 and the majority lived in this vicinity, known as Poletown. The first mass was held in a frame house on Theodore Street. A combined school and church was built at the corner of Frederick and McDougall Streets in 1908. There, Felician nuns taught school in both English and Polish. On May 25, 1924, parishioners dedicated this Romanesque and Byzantine style church, designed by Detroit architects Donaldson and Meier. St. Hyacinth’s pastor, Bishop Stefan Woznicki, founded the Liga Katolicka, a national agency to support the Catholic Church in Poland, in 1945.