Historic Gothic Revival church featuring intricate stained glass, ornate interior architecture, and a long-standing role as a place of worship and cultural landmark.
General Information
Church open for Mass and scheduled religious services throughout the week
How to Get There
From San Antonio (0.5 mi): Head toward downtown, follow Commerce Street east past the River Walk area, and continue to the church entrance at 623 E Commerce Street.
Overview
St. Joseph Catholic Church, downtown San Antonio's fourth Catholic parish, is a Gothic Revival church built between 1868 and 1871 for the city's growing German immigrant community. It's best known today for a quirky bit of history: when Joske's department store wanted to buy the property in 1944 to expand commercially, parishioners refused to sell, so Joske's simply built its store around three sides of the church — earning it the local nickname "St. Joske's."
Inside, look for Annunciation and Assumption murals painted in the 1870s by Friar Henry Pfefferkorn and stained-glass windows imported from Munich's Emil Frei Art Glass Factory in 1902. The church remains an active, multicultural parish and a popular downtown stop for tourists.
Things to Do
See "St. Joske's" Hemmed in by Downtown
Notice how the surrounding retail complex was built around three sides of the church rather than displacing it — one of downtown San Antonio's more memorable pieces of trivia.
View the Murals and Stained Glass
Step inside to see the 1870s side-altar murals and the early-1900s Munich-made stained-glass windows.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "St. Joseph Catholic Church (San Antonio, Texas)", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.
