St. Patrick's Church, Event venue in a former church in Lewiston, Maine, US
St. Patrick's Church in Lewiston, Maine, is a former Roman Catholic church built of brick on rockfaced granite foundations, with two spires rising 220 and 160 feet. The 180-foot-long, 65-foot-wide Gothic structure has seven bays, brick buttresses edged in cut granite, and white North Jay granite trim around its window arches. It now operates as the Agora Grand Event Center.
St. Patrick's Church was built for a Roman Catholic congregation; its cornerstone was laid on July 24, 1887, by the Right Reverend Bishop Healy. The last Mass was held in October 2009. Developer Andrew Knight bought the building in March 2014 and reopened it in May 2016 as the Agora Grand Event Center, work for which the Lewiston Historic Preservation Board gave him an award.
The building served Lewiston's Roman Catholic congregation as St. Patrick's Church until its last Mass in October 2009. Since May 2016 it has operated as the Agora Grand Event Center, and developer Andrew Knight's own wedding was the first held in the renovated space. Knight received an award from the Lewiston Historic Preservation Board for reviving the structure.
The building is now the Agora Grand Event Center, not an active church, so there are no worship services or catechism classes. It stands at 220 feet to its taller spire, the second-tallest structure in Maine, and faces the public park in Lewiston. The former rectory, the Albert Kelsey Mansion, operates as a boutique hotel, the Inn at the Agora.
The former basement crypt held the body of Monsignor Thomas Wallace, the church's original builder and priest, from 1906 until 2007, when he was exhumed and moved to Mt. Hope Cemetery. In 2015 the crypt was converted into what is described as the world's first crypt hotel room, an annex of the Inn at the Agora.
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