About
Calvary Cemetery is the oldest surviving Catholic cemetery in Milwaukee, established in 1857 under the direction of Archbishop John Henni. Spanning roughly 65–75 acres depending on records, it was created as the city’s early Catholic burial ground and quickly became the resting place for a cross-section of Milwaukee’s political, industrial, and religious history. You enter through the arch of the historic Gothic Revival style gatehouse into a landscape defined by Victorian-era monuments, family mausoleums, and a hillside known as Chapel Hill, one of the highest natural points in the city. At its summit you’ll find an amazing view of the baseball stadium, as well as the Calvary Cemetery Chapel that was designed by Milwaukee architect Erhard Brielmaier and completed in 1899. Built of Cream City brick in a cruciform design, the chapel is one of the cemetery’s most distinctive landmarks and a centerpiece of its historic identity.
One of the most unusual features of Calvary lies beneath that chapel. Below the sanctuary is a two-level crypt system originally intended as a mausoleum for clergy, with 45 total vaults carved into the structure. Only one priest was ever permanently entombed there, Father Idziego Tarasiewicz, whose burial rests directly beneath the chapel’s altar. Tarasiewicz was the founder of St. Casimir’s Parish. When he died 1903, a procession of more than 2,000 mourners walked 6 miles from the church in Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood to the Calvary crypt. For unknown reasons, the tunnel leading to the crypt was sealed off sometime afterward and no one else was ever interred in the crypt.
Calvary is also tied to one of the most frequently discussed figures in American Catholic paranormal history: Father Walter Halloran, a Jesuit priest who assisted in the 1949 exorcism of a boy known as “Roland Doe,” the real case that inspired William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist and the 1973 film. Halloran’s grave is located at the base of Chapel Hill
The cemetery also holds cenotaphs memorializing victims of the 1860 Lady Elgin steamship sinking and a mass grave of the Catholic victims of the Newhall House fire, as well as the graves of some of Milwaukee’s most influential early figures, including Solomon Juneau (co-founder and first mayor of Milwaukee), Frederick Miller of Miller Brewing, and Patrick Cudahy, along with numerous civic leaders, clergy, and industrialists who shaped the city’s growth.
Today, Calvary Cemetery remains both an active burial ground and a historic landscape layered with architectural detail, Catholic heritage, and local lore. The combination of its hillside chapel, hidden crypt, and connections to nationally known religious history gives it a presence that feels larger than a typical cemetery visit.
Photos
Calvary Cemetery in Milwaukee
Calvary Cemetery Crypt
