By Pat Sides
In early November of 1964 came the announcement that Assumption Cathedral, the city’s oldest Catholic parish, would hold it last service in the following January. The Central Evansville Improvement Corporation planned to raze the property at Seventh and Vine streets, which included a school, to construct a federal building and post office near the planned new Civic Center complex.
The news dismayed Assumption parishioners, who could trace their church’s history back to 1841 when they worshiped in a building on Second Street. Thirty years later the growing congregation constructed a new church on Seventh Street, and when the Diocese of Evansville was formed in 1944, Assumption was designated the cathedral church.
This image show the final stages of Assumption’s demolition in May 1965, as a lone pedestrian strolls near the remaining fragment of the old landmark.
