St. Joseph Catholic Church, Tacoma

St. Joseph Catholic Church was founded in 1911 by a Slovak Catholic community determined to build its own place of worship. After long shifts in mills, factories, and smelters, parish men returned to dig, lay foundations, push wheelbarrows, and stack bricks by hand, while their children watched them build “their church.”

The completed church was dedicated on May 19, 1912, with a festive parade that brought the Slovak community and its supporters to the new building. Costing about $20,000, it was a major achievement for an immigrant parish. Contemporary reports described the Gothic Revival church as modern and spacious, with an auditorium for around 500 people. Its lancet-arched openings, brick corbelling, set-back steeple, and crenellated details still define its early-20th-century character, while the stained-glass windows were added in 1935 for the parish’s Silver Jubilee.

For decades, St. Joseph preserved its Slovak roots, holding services in Slovak into the 1930s. That identity continued under Reverend Michael Lucas, a Czechoslovakian priest who had escaped Communist rule and served from 1970 to 1983. Today, the church maintains traditional Catholic worship, marked by sacred silence, formal dress, and lace chapel veils during services.