 The Church of the Holy Family, dedicated to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph is located on the corner of Hawthorne Avenue and West Eighth Street in East Price Hill. Designed by J.F. Sheblessy and completed in 1915, it is the only Cincinnati church executed in a simplified Baroque Revival style of architecture. This style developed out of the Late Renaissance in Rome with Michelangelo in the late 16th century and lasted until the early 18th century with the rise of the Rococo style.
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Among the greatest architects of the Baroque was
Francesco Borromini (1599-1667) and one of his most
famous and complex churches in Rome, Saint Agnese in the
Piazza Navona provides examples of the simplified
borrowing at Holy Family Church. This is evident in the
four giant fluted Ionic columns of the facade, sheathed
in terra cotta, supporting an entablature of the same
material which continues as a frieze along the front and
sides of the buff brick building. This colonnaded portico
supports a triangular pediment with an oval relief of the
Holy Family. Just behind and above this pediment is a
repeat of the triangle which supports the cross and
becomes the base of the north and south towers, also in
terra cotta and surmounted by cupolas which bear
identical crosses. At the corner of the base of each
tower are terra cotta urns supported by tripods.
The saucer dome at the crossing of nave and
shallow transepts of the church is barely visible on the
exterior but it dominates the interior where piers
sheathed in marble carry arches with doubled pendentives
supporting the dome. At the east end of the interior a
hemidome denotes the sanctuary with the great Carrara
marble altar behind and above which is the baldachino.
All of the plastered surfaces of the interior were
redecorated from 1946 to 1950 by the last of the German
immigrant mural painters, Gerhard Lamers. Faux stonework
delineates the great arches and trompe l'oeil
painting imitates Baroque stucco ceiling decoration. 