St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Celebrates 150 Years in Duluth

St. Paul's Episcopal church was the first church in Duluth.

DULUTH, Minn.- Duluth’s oldest church is celebrating 150 years this weekend by inviting the community to learn more about its teachings in the Northland.

The outside is beautiful, the architecture is intricate, but it’s what’s inside the brick walls of St. Paul’s episcopal church that makes 150 years so incredible.

“A church is really the people,” St. Paul’s rector Bill Van Oss said.

What started as a morning prayer and weekly communion in 1869 has grown into a congregation of hundreds that families have called home for generations.

“The original church down on Lake Avenue was beautiful. It was a beautiful little wooden structure of the time. But the Episcopalians around 1910 decided they wanted a proper English cathedral,” Van Oss said.

The St. Paul’s cathedral we know today is built with bricks and stain glass windows right on East Superior Street.

Early members of the church are responsible for building more than just a beautiful place of worship, they also built the first St. Luke’s hospital.

“We’re proud of our building obviously, but beyond that we’re really proud of who we are and the presence that the members of St. Pauls, the people of St. Pauls have been in this community throughout the last 150 years,” Van Oss said.

Carlyle Conrad grew up at St. Paul’s. Her great grandfather was on the building committee for the cathedral.

“It’s just a loving community,” Conrad said.

Carlyle also raised her kids in the church.

She believes the people are what have kept the congregation so strong for so many years.

“The church is the building, but the people are the hands and the work of Jesus in the world,” Conrad said.

“It’s been the people 150 years ago who came together to form a community and to do good work in the community and it’s people today who come together to learn and live the way of love and then take that love out into the community,” Van Oss agreed.