Historical New Prague, Minnesota

On April 4th, 1891 New Prague was declared a city! The first photo was taken 100 years later on April 4th, 1991. The town hosted a celebration with floats and cars drive through the streets. This celebration isn’t out of the norm for New Prague. New Prague has a multitude of parades on the main street. The most popular of which is Dožínky days, which celebrates the strong influence of Czech culture and the Czech Harvest, and which still takes place every year.

With its beautiful Georgian and Romanesque Revival architecture, St. Wenceslaus Catholic Church is a landmark of downtown New Prague. The church community originally met in a log cabin opened in the late 1880s, but that location burned down in a fire. The historic photo shows the rebuilt church, designed by Hermann Kretz, an architect from St. Paul. The church opened over 110 years ago on July 7th, 1907. Today the church consists of roughly 1,500 members and holds weekly services that are open to the community. The church also made an addition to the building to house a school for kindergartners through 8th grade. Today, the beautiful chimes of the church ring at the top of the hour filling downtown New Prague.