St. Juliana Falconieri Church

St. Julian Falconieri Catholic Church (St. Juliana) is the first Roman Catholic church in Red Cloud, Nebraska, built in 1883. Abandoned by parishioners in 1903, the church was turned into a residence in 1906 after the completion of a new catholic church. Its conversion to a home altered much of the original structure, which was restored by the Willa Cather Foundation (then the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial) after its donation to them in 1967. The church has historical significance due to its connection to the famous author, Willa Cather, especially because it was where Annie Sadilek Pavelka (the inspiration for Cather's My Ántonia) was married and her illegitimate child, baptized. Both the Willa Cather Foundation and the state of Nebraska have owned the church and, in fact, was operated cooperatively from 1994 to 2018. However, as part of the Willa Cather State Historic Sites, St. Juliana was returned to the foundation in 2019. Today, the church is available for tours and, as part of the Willa Cather Thematic Group, listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1981.

Church data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).