Fire causes portion of steeple to fall from church in Baltimore

BALTIMORE —

A four-alarm fire is burning at a church in east Baltimore Saturday morning.

The fire was reported at the Urban Bible Fellowship Church at Harford and Eager.

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A portion of the steeple fell from the building around 10:30 a.m.

From the Archdiocese of Baltim0re: The former St. James the Less Roman Catholic Church, which was closed in 1986, is on fire. It is now an evangelical church. The Institute of Notre Dame is next door.

St. James Church was formerly home to Roman Catholic Parish of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Its cornerstone was laid on May 1, 1833, and was consecrated on May 1, 1834, according to the archdiocese.

It was the only parish created during the episcopacy of Archbishop James Whitfield, who personally paid for most of the cost of building the church, and it primarily served German immigrants.

The Redemptorists opened a school at the parish, and the School Sisters of Notre Dame began staffing the school in 1847.

The parish merged with St. John the Evangelist (Irish parish) in 1966 and was renamed Ss. James and John Parish.

The parish closed in 1986 and was later sold to a non-Catholic congregation. The adjacent school became the Institute of Notre Dame (IND), which continues to operate under the SSNDs.

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