Today we take a quick jog over to Gilles and Lillian, where I noticed some recent changes to the old St. Mary’s Hungarian Orthodox Church…
I noticed new lettering on the facade…
Looks like another dwindling ethnic congregation is replaced by another. St. Mary’s is now St. Thomas Assyrian Church of the East. I notice also that the orthodox crosses have been removed.
I can’t help but notice how many church have been saved by Windsor’s growing population segments. Coptics, Chaldeans, Maronites and now Assyrians. If it wasn’t for these groups there would be a lot of empty holes in the older parts of the city.
Fodder for a future IM calendar?
Always wondered why the colour of the masonary changed part way up the building. Looks like it was built in phases as the funds became available. Was it ever occupied as just the lower portion and finished at a later date? Just wondering.
If my memory serves me well (a crapshoot since I passed through the ’60s), this was originally a single story building of blonde brick which housed the Church of the Nazarene.
Interesting and good to see that Christians from the Middle East are obviously well-settled in Windsor.
It could have been built in stages. Often the basement was built first and then the church above, with the basement becoming a church hall. There is a full hall under this church.
Another example of this two step process is the St. Paul’s on Pilette.
Christ the King Church was built in the same fashion. Services were first held in the (original) school first, then in the completed church basement until the upstairs was built.
The church used to be St. Mary’s Hungarian Catholic Church. The crosses are common with the Eastern Rite of the Catholic Church. The cornerstone, as shown on the right hand lower side in grey (of the top picture) stated that the church was built in 1954. Sadly, the new owners have chiseled that out so that there is no record of when the original church was built. As you can see, it was only the lower part that was built in 1954. There was a big hall with a stage and a kitchen. On the left hand side of the pictures was the residence for the priest and his family. Yes, a Hungarian Catholic priest, married with a wife and children. In the summer, there was a wedding reception there almost every Saturday. The smell of the food coming from the hall was amazing. Many nights, I would fall asleep listening to the music from the band playing as that was not the only form of music at weddings then, no dj’s. The upper part of the church was built around 1975. I lived on the 1200 block of Lillian St. from 1959 until I was married in 1987. Actually, you can see my childhood home on the extreme right hand side of the middle picture. That house was originally my grandmother’s house, which she purchased in 1953. As luck would have it, I am now living back in this neighborhood. A few owners still here from when I grew up.