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St Lawrence Catholic Church at St Coletta School in Jefferson, WI

I stumbled upon this beautiful church, situated on a small hill beside road on east side of Jefferson WI, while out for a motorcycle ride yesterday. It was dedicated in 1859.
It is adjacent the abandoned campus of what was once called "St. Coletta School for Backward Youth" which was a very large school for children with disabilities. The name was mercifully changed to "St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children" in 1931. Its most famous lifelong resident was Rosemary Kennedy - the "forgotten Kennedy" (brother of JFK) who resided here after a lobotomy at age 23 approved by her father, Joseph Kennedy, rendered her incontinent and unable to speak or walk. She lived here until death in 2005 at age 86. There is much more interesting history about this I did not know, until I googled it.

Another image, shot from different perspective, is available - just search "Lawrence" to see them both.

Peter Herman was born and raised on a farm in North Dakota. He first became interested in photography during high-school, and after acquiring a Pentax SLR, began taking photos for the school yearbook and developing/printing B&W images in school darkroom. He continued shooting through college, taking portraits, group pictures, weddings, but after beginning his engineering career at Cummins, he let his photography interests go dormant until about 2005 when he acquired his first DSLR and started shooting scenic landscapes from around the US, but concentrating especially on rural areas in ND and WI. Many of his images were encountered while riding motorcycle down random backroads during "golden hour", searching for that magic light...