Wisconsin's 75 Churches on the National Register of Historic Places

75 Wisconsin churches in the Churches List directory hold National Register of Historic Places listings. The state's first church listings from this directory came February 23, 1972, and they mark Wisconsin's unusual religious architecture at its source: Saint Mary the Virgin Church in Nashotah and St. John Chrysostom Church in Delafield, two Gothic Revival landmarks of the 1840s Anglican mission settlement in the Waukesha lake country, listed alongside Milwaukee's Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church.

Milwaukee County leads with 19 register-listed churches and Waukesha County follows with 12; together the two counties hold 41 percent of the state list. The remainder spreads thin across the dairy counties, where Norwegian Lutheran, German Catholic, and Yankee Congregational buildings each carry their settlement's architecture.

The complete list of Wisconsin churches on the National Register

The table lists all 75 Wisconsin congregations in this directory whose buildings hold National Register of Historic Places listings as of June 11, 2026. Click a column to sort; the county menu filters the list.

When did Wisconsin churches enter the National Register?

Wisconsin listed 26 churches in the 1970s and 28 in the 1980s, completing most of its eligible-stock documentation in those two decades. After a quiet stretch of 4 listings in the 1990s, the pace recovered to 6 per decade through the 2000s and 2010s, with 5 more since 2020, several tied to rehabilitation tax-credit projects in Milwaukee's South Side parish belt.

Which Wisconsin counties hold the most register-listed churches?

Where the register-listed churches stand: the map

How this list was assembled

The list joins the Churches List directory (6,256 Wisconsin congregations as of June 11, 2026) against the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places database by building location and name. 75 matches hold as of the snapshot date; the earliest Wisconsin church listing dates to 1972. A register listing covers the building, not the congregation, and some listed buildings house congregations younger than the walls. Corrections are applied through the corrections page.

Related reading in The Letter: the Milwaukee church guide places the county's 19 register-listed buildings in city context, and the Upper Midwest's Lutheran concentration maps the settlement behind the rural listings. The Wisconsin state page lists all 6,256 Wisconsin churches.