The end for Milwaukee’s ‘little pink church’ came in 1967
For more than 60 years, the “little pink church” was the spiritual heart of Milwaukee’s Italian community.
But the church — Blessed Virgin of Pompeii Catholic Church, 419 N. Jackson St. — was also in the path of “progress,” a dangerous place to be in Milwaukee in the 1960s.
Built in 1904, the church was the center of Italian Catholic life in the Third Ward for decades. But by the 1960s, urban renewal and freeway construction had left the church — known for the pink bricks it was built from and the marble statue of an angel that stood watch atop its steeple — isolated in a sea of weeds and parking lots.
On Oct. 11, 1966, the county Expressway Commission voted to offer $95,450 for the church property, so that it could be razed for the new Lake Freeway.
The news wasn’t unexpected; parishioners had successfully lobbied to save the church in the 1950s, when that part of the Third Ward was part of an urban renewal project.
This time, a new group urged saving and moving the church. “This church represents Americana,” spokeswoman Barbara De Brozzo said in a Milwaukee Journal story published Feb. 1, 1967. “… Something precious in our back yard.”
The group asked the city Landmarks Commission for help in saving the church, by clearing the way for it to be preserved in a new location. On Feb. 17, 1967, the Blessed Virgin of Pompeii church became the first building “officially identified as a city landmark” by the commission, The Journal reported.
But facing a tight deadline — the church had to be moved or prepared for demolition by July 31, 1967 — the rescue effort ran out of time.
“We contacted everyone with an interest in the church and they agreed that nothing could be done,” Landmarks Commission chairman Richard W.E. Perrin told The Journal in a story published July 8.
Members of the congregation held a farewell dinner on July 29, the night before the final Mass at Blessed Virgin of Pompeii.
Although Journal reporter Peg Meier noted that some at the dinner “quietly told each other that hope was still possible” to save the old church, Perrin, one of the speakers at the dinner, told them otherwise.
“Every legitimate effort was made to save this lovely structure,” he said. “We have to give up now. Progress is inevitable.”
More than 700 people attended the final service at the church, on the morning of July 30. “The spirit of Our Lady of Pompeii, in the heart of so many, will continue on,” Father Italo Scola said in his sermon, according to Sentinel reporter Ron Marose in a story published July 31.
Although there was talk of razing the church the following week, demolition work didn’t begin until September and was completed a month later.
A plaque recalling the little pink church, added in 1977, still marks the site on Jackson St. Next to it, a wooden sign reads “Pompeii Square.”