Polish cathedral style

, Milwaukee, Wisconsin Cleveland, Ohio Skerrett says Polish churches surpassed other immigrants' churches in size. Their style promoted the immigrants' vision of Polish identity. Kantowicz writes in The Archdiocese of Chicago: A Journey of Faith: "The preference of the Polish League for Renaissance and Baroque forms seems more clear cut. The glory days of the Polish Commonwealth came in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when it formed the largest state in Europe… The architectural style of Chicago's Polish churches in Chicago reflect this, particularly the magnificent edifices of Worthmann and Steinbach built along Milwaukee Avenue on the Northwest Side, reflected the renaissance glory of Polish Catholicism". on Polish Hill in Pittsburgh Peter Williams in his book Houses of God: Region, Religion, and Architecture in the United States on p. 179 writes,"[I]n Detroit and Chicago especially, a distinctive genre of church building emerged among Polish communities, the "Polish cathedral." Where most Catholic churches were built in grander or humbler variations and Gothic and Romanesque themes popular across the country, the ambitious prelates in the Great Lakes Polonias often chose to make monumental statements in the Renaissance style of their mother country. The scale of these structures was often enormous, both in the great size of these parishes and the episcopal ambitions of their clerical leaders... Still visible from the freeways, many of these "cathedrals" such as St. Stanislaus Kostka in Chicago now serve African-American or Latino constituencies while others have been closed by their archbishops as no longer economically viable. , Chicago, Illinois The churches are major tourist attractions in Chicago, with tours devoted exclusively to them. In May 1980 the Chicago Architecture Foundation's ArchiCenter held an exhibit on these treasures titled ''Chicago's Polish Churches''. These ornate temples were largely built by the working poor in these regions in the era spanning the period from the end of the American Civil War until the end of World War II. ==Criticism==

Many of Chicago's Protestant elites criticized these stylistically grand churches as "ostentatious" in comparison with the "plainer" style in vogue for Protestant houses of worship. Catholic hierarchs, such as John Lancaster Spalding, the first Bishop of Peoria, responded by comparing the churches that the immigrants financed to the pyramids of Egypt that were built by slaves. Both in scale and scope, these edifices were attempts to contradict the marginal status of Polish immigrants in society. As a stateless people whose culture was systematically attacked in its homeland during the years of partition, they also had a low economic rank in the industrial centers to which they had immigrated at the turn of the century. The construction of these churches greatly influenced the development of neighborhoods that surrounded them. World views that the Polish immigrants from the Old World retained, and their creative assimilation into the New World, shaped the landscape of the rapidly growing industrial regions to which they immigrated. ==List of churches built in the Polish cathedral style==