Endangered: St. Patrick Church

Preservation Iowa's 2021 Most Endangered List: St. Patrick Church, Pottawattamie County

St. Patrick’s parish was organized in 1924 with the purpose of serving the growing Catholic community in northeast Council Bluffs as well as those who worked at Mercy Hospital nearby. Construction of the English Gothic style church was completed in 1926. The red granite cobblestones used in the church are purported to have originally paved a main thoroughfare through Council Bluffs. The church rectory located next to the church was constructed in the mid-1940s. The church underwent extensive interior renovations in the 1970s and again in the 1990s and an exterior rehabilitation around 2005.

Many prominent members of the Council Bluffs community have been members of St. Patrick Church.

The church closed in the spring of 2018 when a new St. Patrick Church opened several miles away. The church and rectory were purchased in 2019 by the YMCA of Greater Omaha with plans to demolish both buildings and use the property for a parking lot and green space to support an existing YMCA facility located nearby.

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St. Patrick Church (Preservation Iowa 2021 Most Endangered List)

Preservation Iowa’s Most Endangered Property program was started in 1995 and implemented to educate Iowans about the special buildings and historic sites that are slowly and gradually slipping away from us. In the past 20 years, Preservation Iowa has designated over 140 archaeological sites, churches, landscapes, and a variety of other buildings.

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