Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, Catholic church in San Jose, United States
Our Lady of Guadalupe Church is a church building in San Jose with a complex of structures including McDonnell Hall and a central sanctuary. The interior displays architectural and decorative elements rooted in Mexican Catholic traditions, with religious symbols and artwork throughout the spaces.
McDonnell Hall was built in 1914 to a design by San Jose architect Louis Lenzen, originally housing the St. Martin of Tours congregation in West San Jose. In 1953 St. Patrick's parish bought it to establish a Mayfair mission for the area's Mexican and Mexican-American Catholics; the building was dismantled and rebuilt near its present site, serving the Our Lady of Guadalupe congregation from 1953 to 1968 and becoming a church in 1960. It was moved 450 feet northwest and deconsecrated in 1974–75, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016.
The parish takes its name from Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Marian title widely venerated in Mexico. Its founding as a Mayfair mission in 1953 served the Mexican and Mexican-American Catholics of East San Jose, and the congregation met in the building now called McDonnell Hall until the six-sided church opened in 1968.
The main church is a six-sided modern building from 1968; McDonnell Hall, the former church, stands in the parking area on its east side. The hall was moved 450 feet (140 m) northwest in 1974–75 to make way for Mayfair Park. The site lies on the south side of East San Antonio Street, east of South Sunset Avenue, northeast of downtown San Jose.
César Chávez was a friend of Father Donald McDonnell, the priest who first led the parish, and helped move and reconsecrate this building as a chapel in 1953. The chapel then housed Chávez's chapter of the Community Service Organization, a training ground for his later activism; he left San Jose for Oxnard in 1958.
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