Among a sea of church steeples that dot East Baltimore, the five domes of St. Michael the Archangel Ukrainian Church stand apart with their burnished glow. Since 1992, the Cossack Baroque style church, modeled after Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, has been home to Baltimore’s Ukrainian Catholic community, though the founding congregation pre-dates the current building.

Since the 19th century, Baltimore has witnessed three waves of Ukrainian immigration. The first began in the 1880’s and continued through World War I, with most Ukrainians arriving in the United States at that time hailing from West Ukraine. These immigrants were Catholic and established the first St. Michael the Archangel Ukrainian Church in 1893 meeting mostly in private homes or at other local Catholic churches.

The second wave of Ukrainian immigration occurred in the 1930s, when Ukrainians left their homeland to escape Soviet persecution and the threat of being sentenced to Soviet labor camps or sent to Siberia. The Holodomor famine, which resulted in millions of deaths of Ukrainians between 1932 and 1933, was another factor that motivated immigration. The famine was man-made, the result of programs implemented by Josef Stalin that took farms away from peasants and forced them to live on collective farms. As a result, agricultural productivity plummeted, causing severe food shortages. When Ukrainians rebelled against the Soviet agricultural collectivization policies, Stalin put towns in Ukraine on a blacklist and prevented them from getting food.

In the 1980’s, Jewish Ukrainians again immigrated to the United States to escape the rising antisemitism present in the Soviet Union. During this time, 70% of Baltimore’s Soviet Jewish population were Ukrainians, with one-third of them hailing from Odessa.

Although St. Michael the Archangel Ukrainian Catholic Church moved locations several times, it was important to the congregation that they remain in East Baltimore where a Ukrainian community had planted roots and grown. By 1912, the congregation moved from meeting in homes to having services in a building at 524 block of S. Wolfe Street. The current church, located on the corner of Eastern and Montford avenues, across from Patterson Park, was consecrated in 1992.

From the beginning, the new church stood out from other East Baltimore houses of worship. Modeled after the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, St. Michael the Archangel boasts five teapot-shaped onion domes covered in gold leaf and 45 tons of copper. The outer surface of the church is covered in stucco. The bell from the church on S. Wolfe Street was moved to the current church’s bell tower.

Overall, the estimated cost of St. Michael the Archangel totaled $1.25 million, including the lot on Eastern Avenue, purchased from the city for $10,000. A 2022 article in The Sun reported that some funds for the church came from parish pierogi sales.

2401 Eastern Ave, Baltimore, MD 21224

In the mid-nineteenth century, Catholic residents of Hampden belonged to the St. Mary of the Assumption parish in Govans, a distant walk from the burgeoning neighborhood. Since the industrial mill village had been built by the owners of the mills for their predominantly white Protestant workers, they had made no accommodations for Catholics to worship in the area. At least until an Irish-Catholic immigrant named Martin Kelly started a small Catholic community. Kelly erected the first non-company housing along Falls Road east of the mills, which grew into the Hampden we know today.

Kelly’s extended family occupied many of the sixteen homes Kelly erected in the 1850s. Others were likely owned by mill employees who could afford to leave the mill villages or by shopkeepers selling goods to other residents in the mill villages. Kelly built a large home for himself on Hickory Avenue, known colloquially as the Kelly Mansion. Fellow Catholics likely knew the house well. Seeking a place to worship closer to home, Kelly persuaded a priest to hold services in his home's parlor, using the piano as an altar. After Kelly's death, his son John donated the land and funds for a new Catholic church in Hampden called St. Thomas Aquinas.

Rev. Thomas Foley laid the cornerstone of St. Thomas Aquinas Church on May 12, 1867. The building, designed by famed local architect George Frederick and constructed at the cost of $20,000, was completed on June 18, 1871. Archbishop Martin John Spalding attended the dedication.

Today, the church complex consists of the church, rectory, school, and convent. The school was founded in 1873 and the current building went up in 1937. At the time, the school had 320 pupils and a staff of eight, hired from the School Sisters of Notre Dame. In 1973, St. Thomas Aquinas clustered with nearby parishes. Grades one to five attended St. Thomas Aquinas, while middle school students attended St. Bernard's in Waverly. Middle schoolers returned to St. Thomas Aquinas in 1996, seven years after St. Bernard's had become a Korean National Parish (which closed just a year later in 1997).

The school reached a crisis point in 2010 when the archdiocese closed thirteen of sixty-four parochial schools in Baltimore. St. Thomas Aquinas avoided closure due to the leadership of its principal, Sister Marie Rose Gusatus. The school took in students from surrounding parishes. However, the school only remained open for another six years.

In 2016, the Archdiocese closed St. Thomas Aquinas School along with Seton Keough High School in Southwest Baltimore and John Paul Regional School in Woodlawn. While the archdiocese claimed enrollment in Catholic schools had begun to stabilize after decades of declining enrollment, funding remained low as enrollment costs were kept low to make the schools more affordable. Also, in response to the need for costly improvements, the archdiocese decided it would be best to consolidate the schools.

1008 W. 37th Street. Baltimore, MD 21211

St. Peter the Apostle Church served southwest Baltimore's large Irish Catholic community for over 160 years. From its dedication in September 1844 through its final service in January 2008, the church earned a reputation as "The Mother Church of West Baltimore" for its role in the growth of the Catholic church.

Built from 1843 to 1844, the handsome Greek Revival building was designed by prominent Baltimore architect Robert Cary Long, Jr. who modeled the church on the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens, Greece. The building is now owned by nearby Carter Memorial Church.

13 S. Poppleton Street, Baltimore, MD 21201