St. Thomas Church and Convent
- Architect
- Barry Byrne
- Year
- 1922
- City
- Chicago, IL
St. Thomas the Apostle Church stands at 5472 S. Kimbark Avenue in Hyde Park, at 55th Street. Built in 1922 and opened in 1925 for the Archdiocese of Chicago, it was designed by Barry Byrne, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Byrne had already built the parish's convent in 1919 before designing the church itself.
the building
Projecting altar, no columns. The church was built during a period of liturgical renewal, with a projecting altar and no interior columns — a layout often cited as anticipating the Second Vatican Council's liturgical reforms by roughly 40 years.
the style
Byrne drew on Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie School vocabulary along with modernist ideas, translating Wright's residential language into an ecclesiastical building unusual for its time.
the architect
Barry Byrne trained under Frank Lloyd Wright and carried Wright's Prairie School principles into ecclesiastical architecture, having designed the St. Thomas convent in 1919 before the church.
significance
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
nearby
- Keck-Gottschalk-Keck Apartments
- Hyde Park Union Church
- Robert A. Millikan House
- University Apartments
- Arthur H. Compton House
- Gerald Ratner Athletics Center