St. Joseph's Catholic Church, Catholic church in Krebs, Oklahoma.
St. Joseph's Catholic Church is a red-brick church at 290 NW Church Street in Krebs, Oklahoma. A campanile above the entrance holds the bell salvaged from the 1886 wooden church. The facade has Romanesque elements: the campanile, an arcaded opening, a small wheel window and arched windows. The exterior is unchanged since construction; the interior was remodeled in 1965.
St. Joseph's traces its origin to 1885, when Benedictine priests Fr. Isidore Robot and Brother Dominic Lambert arrived in what was then Tobucksy County, Choctaw Nation, and built a house and chapel. A wood-frame church and a two-room school run by the Sisters of Mercy were completed in 1886; Fr. Robot died on February 15, 1887, and Fr. Bernard Murphy became first pastor. Fire destroyed the church and rectory on December 13, 1902. Construction of the present brick church began in 1903 and was completed in 1907, with a new rectory finished in 1906; the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
The parish traces its origins to 1885, when Benedictine priests Isidore Robot and Dominic Lambert arrived in Tobucksy County, Choctaw Nation, and the first wood-frame church and a two-room school were completed in 1886. That school, run by the Sisters of Mercy, was the first parochial school in what is now Oklahoma. The original bell, the only item salvaged from the 1902 fire, hangs in the campanile of the brick church.
The church stands at 290 NW Church Street in Krebs, with the entrance beneath the campanile holding the 1886 bell. The interior was remodeled in 1965 and a chapel added in 1978, so the ivory-painted walls and white ceiling differ from the exterior. The brick exterior has kept its appearance through later renovations.
The bell from the original 1886 wooden church survived the fire and was installed in the campanile of the new building. It remains the sole physical link to the predecessor, connecting visitors to the community's continuity of faith.
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