Sacred Heart Catholic Church

320 South B Street

In the 1870s, Jesuit priest Father Paul Ponziglione visited early Catholic settlers in the Arkansas City area.

Father Ponziglione was a missionary who traveled by horse and buggy from Osage Mission (now St. Paul, Kansas) to minister to Osage villages and camps, as well as Catholic settlers in fledgling towns in southeastern Kansas.

In 1886, Florian “Fred” Trimper and his wife, Christina — devout Catholics born in Germany — came to Ark City and offered their home for church services. In October 1886, Father Bernard McKernan was assigned to Winfield as a pastor and also served Ark City as a mission church.

The first Catholic church building in Ark City was a small frame structure built in 1886 and located in what is now the 900 block of North A Street.

But that location was considered inconvenient because, at that time, it was outside the city limits.

In 1898, another wood-frame church was built at the southeast corner of A Street and Fifth Avenue, just west of the former opera house (now the site of the Arkansas City Recreation Center). In October 1900, Father Martin Degnan was sent to Ark City as the first resident priest and served here for 28 years.

By 1919, the congregation had outgrown its small church and construction work began on the current church building at the northeast corner of B Street and Adams Avenue.

The new Sacred Heart Church, dedicated on November 11, 1920, is of the Richardsonian Romanesque and Romanesque Revival architectural style. It is built of Copper Chief brick, is 120 by 42 feet and has two 85-foot-tall towers.

Sacred Heart School was built just to the north of the church in 1926.

In November 1944, a longtime Sacred Heart pastor, Father Arthur Holtz, was named administrator of the parish and served as pastor until September 1961.

On September 18, 1960, Mark K. Carroll, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Wichita, traveled to Arkansas City to dedicate a Sacred Heart parish recreation building behind the church and school in the 300 block of South C Street. The Sisters of St. Joseph taught generations of Ark City-area students at Sacred Heart School.