A brick Evangelical Augsburg church from 1835-1838 designed by Florian Onderka, with a tower from 1856-1857 and a parish museum.
The Church of St James the Elder in Ustroń is the church of the Evangelical Augsburg parish, built in 1835-1838 of stone and brick. It has a Classicist façade and a square tower, and beside it stand the former school, the presbytery and an Evangelical cemetery.
After the Patent of Toleration of 1781, the Evangelicals of Ustroń built a wooden shed as a house of prayer in 1783, and in 1785 a wooden chapel next to it. The initiator of building a brick church was Father Karol Fryderyk Kotschy. Funds also came from donors from outside the Duchy of Cieszyn, among them Archduke Charles of Habsburg and King Frederick William III of Prussia. The foundation stone was laid on 25 July 1835, and the church was blessed in 1838. The design was prepared by the Lwów architect Florian Onderka. The tower was added in 1856-1857.
The interior has three naves, with two-storey brick galleries in the side aisles and a barrel vault over the main nave. The chancel is closed on the east with a semicircle. Among the furnishings, a Rococo pulpit from the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, a painting of “The Last Supper” from the early 19th century and pewter chalices, jugs and candlesticks stand out. Three cast-steel bells from the German foundry Bochumer Verein hang in the tower, named Faith, Hope and Love.
Since 2021 the parish has run the museum named after Father Piotr Wowry, which collects early printed books and parish memorabilia, including the most valuable version of the painting “The Last Supper”. In the neighbourhood stand the Evangelical school from 1835, raised in 1870, the presbytery from the early 19th century and a cemetery founded in 1858. Not far away, about 600 metres on, is the Catholic Church of St Clement, and the Jan Jarocki Ustroń Museum lies about 1.3 km from the church.
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