At that time, immigrants from Germany were arriving, and the single Catholic parish in St. Paul mainly served French and Irish settlers, with services in Latin and sermons in their own languages.

The church's construction was ordered by then-Archbishop John Ireland, who wanted the city's growing Catholic German immigrant population to have a parish of their own.

[2] It was built in a plain Romanesque style of Lake Superior limestone by German Catholics, and is said to have been modeled after the Ludwigskirche in Munich.

[3][4] It was built, according to the plans of the Bavarian Joseph Reidel, by the Germans in 1869–1874 in a neo-Romanesque, stone-washed style of Lake Superior.

[5] Media related to Church of the Assumption (Saint Paul, Minnesota) at Wikimedia Commons