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St. Alphonsus Church is located in downtown Baltimore at the corner of Saratoga Street and Park Avenue. This former home of St. John Nepomucene Neumann, C.Ss.R., was designed by architect Robert Cary Long, Jr. in the nineteenth century. The cornerstone of St. Alphonsus Church was laid by Canon Josef Salzbacher of the Leopoldine Society on May 1, 1842. It took almost three years to complete construction, and was dedicated on March 14, 1845. Charge of the Church was given to the Redemptorist congregation, and their main worshippers were German immigrants.
In 1850, the Redemptorists were constituted a province under Hafkenscheid and the headquarters were located at St. Alphonsus Church. In 1883 the Father Alexander Branch No. 41 of the Catholic Benevolent Legion (CBL) was established at St. Alphonsus, the first German branch of the CBL in the United States.
By 1917 the dynamics of Baltimore had changed. No longer did the German immigrants dominate the city, so the Redemptorists sold St. Alphonsus to the growing Lithuanian congregation. St. Alphonsus was designated a Shrine on February 16, 1995.
Source: Spalding, Thomas W., The Premier See: A History of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, 1789-1994.