[ 12 ] Our Lady of Lourdes Church

335 Main Street
(now Wellfleet Preservation Hall)

Fishermen from the Azores and Nova Scotia were the first to bring the Catholic faith to Outer Cape towns.

Services were held in private homes as early as the 1850s. In 1900 an abandoned one-room schoolhouse at the head of Duck Creek, near the present Cemetery, was bought to serve as Our Lady of Lourdes Chapel. Catholicism flourished and in 1910, Our Lady of Lourdes became a parish under the care of the Sacred Hearts Fathers from Belgium. In 1912, using some of the wood from the first chapel, parishioners built a new church on Main Street for $24,300. In 1989, the Sacred Hearts Fathers passed their responsibility to the Diocese of Fall River. The Church was closed in November 2000, and the parish subsequently relocated to a location on Route 6. The Diocese sold both the old church building and the parking lot across the street to the Town of Wellfleet. The old church building is now Wellfleet Preservation Hall, a community center, and the property surrounding the building is a public park.

In the early 1980s, the resident pastor allowed two itinerant artists to camp behind the Church. In return they created these carved and painted decorative doors.