Sacred Spaces in 360°

Click the images above to access immersive tours of St. Stanislaus Kostka in Chicago, optimized for computer, phones, and handheld devices, or optimized for VR headsets, e.g. Google Cardboard.

Led by Peter Kioba, a local Polish politician and civic leader, a group of thirty Polish families founded the Society of St. Stanislaus Kostka in 1867. At this time, Chicago’s Catholic community was comprised mostly of Irish and Germans, and with the blessing of Chicago’s Bishop Foley, the Society undertook plans to build a mother church for Chicago’s Polish Catholic community.

Having purchased at the intersection of Noble and Potomac Streets, at the time in the far outskirts of the city, the Society of St. Stanislaus Kostka undertook the building of a small parish church, with a school and social hall underneath. The church survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. 

With increased Polish Catholic immigration, the community’s small parish building was unable to support the growing number of worshippers. Parishioner broke ground on a new church, laying its cornerstone on July 1, 1877, and completing the current structure in 1892. By the end of that decade, St. Stans parish was the home to approximately eight thousand families, comprising forty thousand individual members, making St. Stanislaus Kostka the largest parish by population in the United States of America. It also operated a school and convent, led by the School Sisters of Notre Dame.

Designed by Brooklyn, New York architect Patrick C. Keeley, who also designed Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral, St. Stans was built in a Romanesque style. The interior included features preferred by Polish-Americans, who tended towards the Polish Baroque ornamentation style. Elaborate woodwork characterized the altar, altarpieces, and chancel. The parishioners also imported German stained glass windows so as to emphasize continuity with the Central European tradition. The church building also originally featured dual bell towers, with the southern tower being destroyed by lightning in 1964. 

St. Stanislaus Kostka is sometimes called “the church that moved an expressway.” In the 1950s, with the Federal, State, and City governments in the midst of building the new Kennedy Expressway, St. Stans was to be demolished. A coalition of neighborhood activities, Polish-American politicians, and parishoners convinced the highway planners to instead shift the new freeway’s path. Even today, the Kennedy makes an abrupt turn as it approaches St. Stanislaus Kostka. Cars on the incoming Kennedy whirl past the building, mere feet away from the rearmost wall of the church. 

St. Stanislaus Kostka's website contains additional information about the church, both in terms of its history and contemporary life at this active parish.

Instructions for Using the Tour

Computer / Desktop Instructions:

When using a computer, you navigate with your mouse/trackpad. Using your cursor, you can click and drag to change your view to anywhere within the 360° area. Click on the arrows to move to different areas in the tour. You can also use the buttons in the menu bar at the bottom of the screen to pan in different directions, zoom, and change the various interface options. Go ahead and experiment. If something stops working, you can always reload!

As you move the cursor through the screen you will see some highlighted regions appear. Click on them to bring up informative popups. There are also a few “more info” buttons that also open popups. Just click on those buttons to open a popup. To close a popup, click inside the popup box.

Tablet or Phone Instructions:

On a tablet or phone, you navigate by moving the device (if your device supports gyroscopic feedback, which most do), or by dragging the image on the screen. Touch the arrows or highlighted areas to explore the tour. Touch the popup boxes to close them. Sometimes, depending on how you are holding your mobile device, you may not always face the same way as you progress through the tour. You can turn off the gyroscopic controls by clicking the small gyroscope image at the bottom of the screeen.

The tour works best in landscape (horizontal) mode.

On some phones you may need to lift up your phone to portrait mode, then back to landscape mode, in order to clear the menu bar at the top or bottom of the screen. 

Virtual Reality/VR/Google Cardboard Instructions:

The tours can also be experienced in full 360° using a VR headset, such as a Google cardboard. Once the tour opens, click on the viewer icon to active VR mode (see image on left). You may need to do this on a second screen (see image on right).

To navigate the tour in VR mode, point the small white crosshairs in the center of the view towards buttons or arrows.

If you are using a phone as a VR headset, it is suggested that you turn off screen lock and automatic dimming to avoid interruption of the tour.

On all devices, you can also navigate the tour using the control bar at the bottom of the screen.

HTC Vive and Oculus Rift Virtual Reality Instructions: 

If you have access to a virtual reality headset such as the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift, this tour can be experienced through your headset via the WebVR API. With your headset and software turned on and ready, navigate in the Firefox (Mozilla) browser to the VR link for the tour, with ?vr at the end.

VR walkthrough of St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish of Chicago, optimized for all devices: /dcfiles/zeller/ststans/ststans.html