A fire broke out on the front porch of Henni Hall, the 170-year-old centerpiece of Saint Francis de Sales Seminary in St. Francis, Wisconsin, and spread into the building's walls before crews brought it under control. Contractors had been working on the building's porch when the fire started, and no injuries were reported.
The fire began during ongoing construction on Henni Hall's front porch, according to Luke Strand of the St. Francis Fire Department, who said the flames damaged a wood portico sitting atop a steel-frame base before extending into the walls, per officials cited by FOX6 News Milwaukee. Strand said the fire was extinguished quickly and that no injuries were reported. The fire department is investigating the cause and extent of the damage.
Henni Hall, a four-story Italianate-style building dedicated in 1856, sits on the seminary campus along South Lake Drive. Andrew Jensen said damage to a building from the 1800s would likely be extensive, though the full exterior toll will depend on an assessment of smoke and water damage, according to the same FOX6 report.
A Building Already Mid-Overhaul
The fire struck in the middle of an extensive renovation the seminary began in 2025, a $75 million restoration of Henni Hall and adjacent buildings that the FOX6 report notes includes both mechanical upgrades and extensive interior and exterior work. That project is part of the seminary's $75 million “Zeal for the Lord's House” capital campaign, which hit its fundraising goal in October 2025 after drawing donations from more than 4,000 supporters — the first formal capital campaign in the institution's 179-year history, according to the Catholic Herald.
The scope of the work includes modernizing outdated electrical, HVAC, and fire protection systems, replacing all windows and roofing, tuckpointing the exterior masonry, and restoring Henni Hall's central dome, the Catholic Herald previously reported. Living facilities inside the hall had not seen major renovation since the 1980s, when they were designed to house just 35 seminarians. Milwaukee-based Hunzinger Construction Co. is serving as the primary construction manager on the project, having broken ground on campus in May 2025, according to Hunzinger's own account of the year's work.
Why No One Was Living Inside
Crucially, the building had already been emptied of residents by the time the fire broke out. In May 2025, the seminary fully vacated 140,000 square feet of space across Henni Hall and Kiley Hall, moving all seminarians and staff into temporary quarters at the nearby Mary Mother of the Church Pastoral Center on May 12, 2025, ahead of a planned 18-month construction period.
That timeline had seminarians on track to move into the order's house of formation this fall. Enrollment has surged in recent years, growing from 26 seminarians representing two dioceses in 2013 to 90 men from 11 dioceses as of this year, making it one of the fastest-growing Catholic seminaries in the country. The seminary forms candidates for dioceses across Wisconsin and several neighboring states. It was not the campus's only brush with structural trouble in recent memory — storms and flooding caused a portion of a roof to collapse in August 2025.
A Building Steeped in History
Henni Hall was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 24, 1974, recognized for its architecture as a 4.5-story Italianate building designed by Milwaukee architect Victor Schulte, who also designed St. John's Cathedral and Old St. Mary's Church. Inside, Archbishop Henni consecrated Christ King Chapel in June 1861 during the Civil War, installing an 11-foot gilded cross atop the building's cupola and interring the seminary's first two rectors beneath the chapel floor.
Before construction began, workers had carefully dismantled an unstable 19th-century Cream City brick coach house on campus, salvaging its distinctive locally made bricks for reuse in Henni Hall's expansion wings — part of the preservation effort underway even before fire touched the historic structure. Founded in 1845 inside the Milwaukee home of Bishop John Martin Henni to supply German-speaking priests to the Wisconsin Territory, Saint Francis de Sales Seminary is the oldest Roman Catholic seminary in continuous operation in the United States and has formed more than 4,200 priests.
What Comes Next
Whether the fire will delay the restoration project's anticipated completion remains an open question, per FOX6's reporting. The blaze adds uncertainty to a campus already in flux: Hoodline reported last month that the Archdiocese of Milwaukee will relocate its central administrative offices from the St. Francis pastoral center property to a former corporate facility in Oak Creek, leaving the future use of the surrounding St. Francis land under archdiocesan review even as the seminary presses ahead with its own multi-year overhaul next door.
