Twin towers 180 feet high mark St. Adalbert's Basilica, one of the most magnificent Polish Catholic churches in the United States and the spiritual heart of Grand Rapids' west side immigrant community. St. Adalbert was a tenth-century Czech bishop martyred while doing missionary work among the Prussians — a saint claimed by Polish Catholics as their own and carried to America by immigrants who brought their faith across the Atlantic along with their tools and their recipes. The parish was founded in 1881 by Polish families who had settled in the factory districts west of the Grand River, and this grand Baroque Revival church, completed in 1913, represents the collective sacrifice of a working-class congregation that donated wages and labor to build something that would outlast all of them.
The twin towers rise 180 feet above the flat west side streetscape, visible for miles. Inside, the domed ceiling, the marble altars, and the painted murals are on a scale that rivals any Catholic church in Michigan. Pope John Paul II's elevation of the church to basilica status in 1979 — recognizing its historical and architectural significance — came as no surprise to the parishioners who had always known what they had built.