Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church

The present church was designed by Leo M. J. Dielmann, a San Antonio architect whose family firm, Dielmann Construction, built across South Texas. By the National Register survey it was his only commission in Victoria. The building is Romanesque Revival, a basilica plan on a high raised basement, of brown-outlined buff brick with pyramidal bell towers and a painted, stencilled interior that survives largely intact. A. W. Fuessel was the contractor. Across from the church's north side stands the Sengele House of 1844, the oldest surviving building in Victoria.

What the plaque says

Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church In 1872 the Rev. Jean Baptiste Teitien was appointed as an assistant pastor at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Victoria. There he realized the need for a separate parish to serve the area's German-speaking community. He received permission to begin a new church from the Rt. Rev. Anthony Dominic Pellicer, first Bishop of the Diocese of San Antonio, and traveled to his native Germany to collect funds for the construction of a church building. He returned to Victoria with enough money to begin construction, and in 1875 he led the first worship services in the completed building for Our Lady of Lourdes parish. After serving as pastor for sixteen years, Teitien resigned to return to Germany, where he died in 1923. Another minister who served Our Lady of Lourdes was the Rev. F.X. Heck (b. 1864), who succeeded Teitien and left in 1905 to become pastor of St. Mary's Church in Victoria. The original church building was destroyed by fire during the pastorate of the Rev. Lawrence Etschenberg (1870-1946) and was replaced with the current structure in 1924. The history of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church is an important reminder of the cultural heritage of Victoria County. (1984)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• De León Plaza — steps away
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 1.7 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.
• Fannin Battleground State Historic Site — 16 mi
  The open prairie east of Goliad where Fannin's retreating column formed a square short of the Coleto Creek timber on March 19, 1836, and surrendered the next day.
• Fannin Memorial Monument — 25 mi
  The 1938 pink granite memorial over the common grave of Fannin's men, shot on the roads out of Goliad on Palm Sunday 1836, the grave itself found again only in the 1930s.

More markers nearby

• Hauschild Opera House — steps away
• The Victoria Advocate — steps away
• Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church — steps away
• De Leon Plaza — steps away