St. Wenceslaus Church, Wisconsin

St. Wenceslaus Roman Catholic Church, also known as the Island Church, was built around 1863 by settlers on an island of high ground in the Blue Joint Marsh a couple miles southeast of Waterloo, Wisconsin. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. In the mid-1840s and 50s, immigrants from Germany and Bohemia (now western Czech Republic) settled on the high ground in the Blue Joint Marsh to farm. Most of the immigrants from Bohemia came from four villages within walking distance of each other. Many were Catholic, and in their new land they wanted a place to worship. About 1863 they built their small church, with walls of tamarack logs. Richard Perrin considered this rare surviving log church important enough to include in his book The Architecture of Wisconsin. He guessed that the logs were exposed on the outside for the first few years, then covered with the vertical board and batten pictured. Two windows on each side are protected with wooden shutters. Entry is through a small vestibule centered at the front of the building. Above that entry rises a two-stage louvered belfry which holds the church's original bell. Above that a narrow spire rises to a metal cross. Inside, the log walls are coated with lime plaster. The altar is white, with a picture of St. Wenceslaus, patron of Bohemia, flanked by Mary and Joseph. Framed pictures of the Stations of the C

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