St. Mary Star of the Sea Church

In 1880 Bishop Casper Henry Borgess of the Detroit Diocese approved the establishment of a second Catholic parish in the city of Jackson. The cornerstone ceremony for the parish church was held on July 4, 1881. The present limestone Romanesque structure, erected in 1923-26, was designed by Frederick Spier of Detroit. One of the towers houses the twenty-seven hundred-pound 1902 bell from the parish’s first church. The edifice also features stained glass windows imported from Innsbruck, Austria, and Italian Carrara marble altars and communion rails. The confessionals and sacristy cases were built using the pews of the first building. During the parish’s growth, from 124 members at its founding to 3,800 at the time of its centennial, it has had only six pastors.