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4440 Russell Street at Canfield Street
On February 11, 1889, Father Dominic Kolasinski
incorporated under the title of the Sacred Heart of Mary
Parish. Shortly afterwards he began the construction of a
church-school building on Canfield Avenue which still
stands today behind the church edifice.
The new parish grew so rapidly that already on July .28,
1890, he began the construction of the present cathedral-
like church. Tensions between his followers who were
called “Kolachy” (the Kolasinskians) and the “Dombruchy”
(the Dombrovites) who were the followers of Father Joseph
Dombrowski, the founder of the Polish Seminary who had
succeeded Father Kolasinski at St. Albertus, continued in
their fervid intensity. In fact, on Christmas Eve of 1891,
young Joseph Bolda, 19, a Dombrovite, was killed in an
altercation between Kolasinskians and Dombrovites.
On June 5, 1892, a cornerstone-laying ceremony presided over
by a “bishop” of dubious antecedents took place. On December
24, 1893, Christmas Eve, the church was officially dedicated
with great pomp and circumstance by a socalled Old Catholic
bishop, Joseph Rene Vilatte, with more than 10,000 people in
attendance. The great church, designed by the architectural
firm of Spier and Rohns, was hailed as one of the most
beautiful Gothic structures in the State of Michigan and as the
largest and grandest Polish church in the United States
Sweetest Heart
of Mary Church,
Detroit
Established 1886
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Parish Website
