Built in 1903, this Renaissance Revival-style former Catholic Church and School housed the Corpus Christi Parish, which served the Catholic population on the west side of Newport. The building was constructed to house the first Catholic congregation to be formed in Newport, which was founded by Father Charles Boeswald in 1844. Originally run by the Jesuits and Ursuline Sisters, the original church was at Chestnut Street and Brighton Street further north in the neighborhood, and received the addition of a school and rectory in 1849, with the priest at the church being fluent in both English and German, owing to the large German immigrant population that was beginning to settle in the area. A new church was built in 1854, with the addition of a new school building in 1863, and a taller spire in 1876. From Corpus Christi Church, various other churches branched off to serve various ethnic groups and neighborhoods in Newport, including St. Stephen Parish in 1854, serving German catholics, and Immaculate Conception Parish in 1855, serving the local Irish population. However, in the 1880s, the church was inundated and heavily damaged by a series of floods, which led to the need for a new church in a less flood-prone location, which resulted in the acquisition of land at Isabella Street and 9th Street and the construction of this building in the early 20th Century. The building features a rusticated stone facade with Renaissance-style gable parapets, arched stained glass windows with limestone trim, a front door with a portico surround featuring a pediment, composite pilasters, and a stained glass transom, two smaller wings flanking the central wing, each crowned with a decorative gable parapet and featuring triple windows on each floor, with a three-story front wing and a shorter rear wing that houses part of the church’s sanctuary. The church saw the addition of a rectory across the street in the early 20th Century, and a high school one block to the south in 1922, which became the Corpus Christi Parish Elementary School in 1933. The church was flooded by seven feet of water during the 1937 Ohio River Flood, which did extensive damage to the first floor, basement, and sanctuary, and led to a decline in the surrounding neighborhood. The parish began a long, slow decline, which only accelerated with white flight, urban renewal, and suburbanization after World War II. The parish school closed in 1984, and eventually, due to declining enrollment and the retirement of three of the four priests in Newport, Corpus Christi Church was one of three Catholic parishes that was shuttered permanently in 1997, with all parishes merged into Holy Spirit Parish, housed in the newer St. Stephen Church on the east side of Newport. The church was subsequently sold, and the building was purchased by the Housing Authority of Newport and converted into low-income subsidized apartments, which maintained the building’s original exterior appearance and details, but divided the interior into residential units. The church building remains a major landmark on the west side of Newport, and is a great example of the adaptive reuse of a historic building to serve a new purpose.
