St. Andre's Parish, Catholic parish complex in Biddeford, United States.
St. Andre's Parish is a former Roman Catholic complex on Bacon and Sullivan Streets in Biddeford, Maine. Its four buildings are not uniform: the brick church at Bacon and High was completed in 1910 in Romanesque Revival style to designs by Chickering & O'Connell, the rectory is a late Second Empire structure from 1900, and the convent (1916, enlarged 1930) and former school (1920s) are Colonial Revival.
St. Andre's was founded in 1899 as Biddeford's third Catholic church, after St. Mary's (1855) and St. Joseph's (1860), to serve a French-Canadian population that had outgrown St. Joseph's. Rev. Louis Bergeron was its first priest. The church basement opened in 1900, the upper church in 1910. The school closed in the early 1990s and became housing in 1998; the parish merged into Good Shepherd Parish in 2008, and the church held its final mass on New Year's Eve 2010.
The church served as the spiritual and social hub for the French-Canadian community that settled in this area, shaping their religious practices and neighborhood identity. The complex remains a visible reminder of how this immigrant group established roots and built institutions in their new home.
The buildings are located along Bacon and Sullivan Streets and are visible from the street, making it easy to view them from outside. Keep in mind that the former school now contains residential apartments, so interior access may be restricted.
The rectory, built in 1900, is an unusually late example of Second Empire architecture. The church was designed by the Boston firm Chickering & O'Connell and completed in 1910, while the convent dates from 1916 and was enlarged in 1930.
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