The city of Racine had been chartered for half a century when Holy Communion Lutheran Church was organized in 1898. There were already nine flourishing Lutheran churches in town, but not one held its services in English. Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, German . . . these were the languages spoken on Sunday mornings in 1898 by Racine Lutherans.

There had been an attempt several years earlier to start an English-language church. In 1889 Dr. W. K. Frick came from Pennsylvania to Milwaukee and organized the first English Lutheran church in Wisconsin. Two years later he held English-speaking services at the Scandinavian Lutheran Church on State Street in Racine. Establishing a new congregation, however, was not easy, and after several months those services were discontinued.

Seven years passed. In 1898 two laymen from Minneapolis paid the expenses for a seminary student to canvass the city and organize a church. The student, C. K. Lippard, started a Sunday School and held services in the Immanuel Danish Lutheran Church at Lafayette and Oak. Those services were soon moved to the lecture room of the YMCA building at the northeast corner of Sixth and College.

It was there on September 4, 1898, that a permanent congregation was established. Dr. Frick returned to Racine to preside at the organizational meeting where thirty-four people signed the charter. The First English Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Holy Communion had begun.

Almost immediately, as the congregation grew, it began to search for a site for its own building. Already on Reformation Day in 1901 the cornerstone was laid for a new church at the corner of Washington Avenue and Tenth Street.

After a rapid influx of members, it became clear by the late 1920s that a larger worship space was needed. There simply wasn't enough room at Tenth and Washington any more. After countless meetings, the congregation decided to buy the Luther College building at the end of Sixth Street and erect a new sanctuary alongside and attached to it, using the three-story college structure as a parish hall. Their faith was large so they drew plans for a grandly arching nave 45 feet high, where 500 worshippers would bathe in the light of two dozen lovely stained-glass windows.

The new Holy Communion sanctuary, begun in October of 1927 and dedicated February 17, 1929, dominated the landscape. Of traditional Gothic style, it soon became known as "the church on the hill."

At the end of our first hundred years, we have good reason to celebrate the efforts of our founders. We thank God for working in them his vision for our congregation, and we are grateful for the determination of those faithful pioneers

Click here to read about the history of our Northwestern Campus