St. Margaret Mary Church (Omaha)

Jeremiah James Harty, bishop of Omaha, commissioned Fr. Leo Patrick to establish a parish in the Dundee area in 1919. He celebrated the first Mass at 8 am on Sunday, September 7, 1919, in the dance hall above Ernest Buffett’s (Warren Buffett’s grandfather) grocery store.^[1] The new parish remained unnamed until the canonization of St Margaret Mary Alacoque on Ascension Thursday, May 13, 1920, by Pope Benedict XV. On that same day, the bishop placed the young parish under this new saint's protection.^[2]

In 1941, Fr. Joseph A Suneg commissioned Leo A Daly, the firm whose many credits include the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels and the National World War II Memorial,^[3] to design the Rural English Gothic church. Parson's Construction Company began work the autumn before Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and just nine months later on June 14, 1942, the dedication mass was celebrated.^[4]

With a floorplan of 132' x 44′ the church has the same three-to-one proportions as Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem^[5] as well as the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City.^[6] In 1952, Italian artist Sirio Tonelli installed his reproduction of "The Frieze of the Prophets" by American portraitist John Singer Sargent on the sanctuary wall. The stained glass windows were designed by the famed Charles Jay Connick studio of Boston.^[7] In conformity with its Gothic character, a foliate disgorging Green Man adorns the north exterior wall beneath the rose window.

At least six other churches have been modeled after this Daly design including St Mary’s of Omaha, St Patrick’s of North Platte (NE), St Ann’s of Vail (IA), St Philip Neri of Omaha, St Paul’s Lutheran of West Allis (WI), and Cloister’s on the Platte of Gretna (NE).^[8]

In 1963, the iconic 112-foot-tall Leo A Daly-designed High Gothic bell tower was dedicated by Archbishop Gerald Thomas Bergan in memory of attorney Daniel J Gross. The belfry includes four bronze bells. The largest at 6,052 lbs. (tone “B flat”) was cast by the McShane Bell Foundry in 1885. It was salvaged from the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Leavenworth, Kansas, after a catastrophic fire in 1962.^[9]

In 2017, the former baptistery was converted into a Eucharistic Adoration chapel.^[10]

In 1920, the first classes were held in a parish house at 5002 California Street. By 1922 a new combination school/church was opened next door at 608 N 50th Street. It wasn't until 1951 that the school moved to its current location at 123 N 61st Street. Leo A Daly designed an edifice architecturally inspired by the Cotswolds region of central-southwest England.^[11] In 2008 it was recognized as a "National Blue Ribbon School Program" by the U.S. Department of Education.^[12]