Gesù Church

This guide to Gesù Church in downtown Miami opens with the city's first church, a plain wooden shack built in eighteen ninety-two by German settler William Wagner, and its destruction by fire that same year. It follows the Catholic parish that rose from the ashes in eighteen ninety-six, the same year Miami itself was founded, through the nineteen twenty-two cornerstone-laying for a grander building led by a parade of the Knights of Columbus. The guide also traces the Munich stained glass and soaring altar arch that filled the sanctuary when it opened a few years later.