Dorchester Illustration 2721 Saint Ann’s Roman Catholic Church
Today’s illustration, the building in the foreground is the first rectory of St. Ann’s Church. The building farther away is the parish’s first church building.
Father Fitzpatrick of St. Gregory’s Catholic Church in 1880 bought a lot of land on Minot Street in Neponset, and by December 1881, a new wooden church was ready.
A story published in The Boston Globe, Nov. 22, 1880, stated that “St. Anne’s [sic] Roman Catholic Church, Neponset, will be ready for occupancy on Christmas Day. It is a neat wooden structure, seating about 400 persons.” The church remained a ward of St. Gregory’s until 1889 when it became St. Ann’s Parish.
In 1915, Father John S. McKone began the construction of a new church on a new site, on Neponset Avenue. The new church building in the style of a Roman basilica with a campanile (freestanding bell tower) in the rear was finished in 1920.
In the edition of July 23, 2020, the Dorchester Reporter newspaper stated that on July 1, 2020, the parishes of St. Brendan and St. Ann had been consolidated. Later in 2020, the new parish was named St. Martin de Porres.