St. Peter the Apostle Church was a Roman Catholic church located within the Archdiocese of Baltimore in Baltimore, Maryland. Constructed at the northwest corner of Hollins and South Poppleton Streets (848 Hollins) and (11-13 South Poppleton), it was often referred to as "The Mother Church of West Baltimore."
Description
The church was built in 1842 to minister to the growing Irish population of old West Baltimore, who had immigrated to the city in vast numbers to work for the B&O Railroad.
Robert Cary Long, Jr., a prominent local "ecumenical architect," (both secular and religious) and son of a similarly famous accomplished father of the same name designed the church in the Greek revival style with imposing granite pillars gracing the facade of the building. Its appearance is similar to the now landmark Lloyd Street Synagogue off East Baltimore Street, also designed by Long, a year later for the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation in the Jonestown/Old Town neighborhood of East Baltimore, across the Jones Falls. Among others, Long also designed the third church for Old St. Paul's (1814-1817) which burned in 1854. and the Franklin Street Presbyterian Church (1847) at Cathedral and West Franklin Streets The design was based on Athens' Temple of Hephaestus. The interior of the church features a large, open nave furnished with wooden pews. Behind the altar stood in an apse adorned with white columns, and punctuated with an imposing white marble tabernacle. It contained statues of angels and the holy family, and was topped with a large statue of Saint Peter. The inscription above the tabernacle read, "Tu Es Petrus," a reference to the biblical passage, "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church" (Matt. 16:18). The church also had a historic tracker organ designed by Henry Niemann. The organ was removed to storage when the building was sold to Carter Memorial Church of God in Christ in 2012.
The name of the church was transferred to here upon the closing of the colonial red-brick church, rectory, school and small surrounding cemetery and its subsequent razing in 1841 of the original St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church. The older parish had been founded in 1770 as the first "Roman Catholic Congregation of Baltimore Town" with new immigrants of Acadians, who were French Canadians expelled recently from their colony of Acadia, now the British-occupied province of Nova Scotia after the losses by France in North America from the French and Indian War (known in Europe as the Seven Years' War, 1756-1763) and settled along the southwestern shores of "The Basin" (now Inner Harbor) of the Patapsco River which became known as "Frenchtown," beyond the intersection of Forest (South Charles) and King George (now West Lombard) Streets. With the joining of some additional Irish settlers, the Roman Catholic population of the new Baltimore Town was growing with the first Mass being said by the Rev. John Ashton from Doughoregan Manor from the Carroll's country estate in the late 1760s to 1770 and came to the town about once a month. The congregation seldom exceeded twenty worshippers and seldom exceeded forty.
The original St. Peter's building was the "Pro-Cathedral" of the Diocese from 1791 to 1821 and the first church used as Roman Catholic Cathedral in the United States. Father John Carroll was named the first bishop for the United States in 1789, installed the following year as Ordinary of the new Diocese of Baltimore, "The Premier See." His seat was at old St. Peter's.
The older church was located at the northwestern corner of Forest Street (later North Charles) and XXX Lane (later West Saratoga Street), opposite the Old St. Paul's Anglican Parish on the southeastern corner situated above the rugged cliffs to the east overlooking the Jones Falls loop to the northeast around "Steiger's Meadow", below the new Baltimore County and Town Courthouse (just constructed in the new Courthouse Square at the north edge of the town at Calvert Street between New Church Street (now East Lexington Street) and Fish Lane (now East Fayette Street) a year after when the county seat was re-located here from Old Joppa in 1767. The new path of St. Paul's Lane (later Street/Place) ran north and south just below the heights where the two churches were located.
