St. Michael’s first church, dedicated in 1852, was built at North Avenue and Church (now Hudson) streets in the Old Town neighborhood. It served Catholic members of the large North Division German immigrant community. Brewer Michael Diversey, after whom Diversey Avenue is named, donated the land on which the church stood. The far grander second St. Michael’s, with a two-hundred-foot steeple, was dedicated in September of 1869, at what is now Cleveland and Eugenie streets, one block north and one block west of the original location. As the fire moved inexorably toward their church, clergy and parishioners carried away what they could before the building was destroyed. As this photograph shows, all that was left standing were the building’s walls, which were in remarkably good condition considering what they had endured. The tower was gone, however, and the bells that had hung within it were now fused together in the ruin.
