Make your BOWLING DEPOSIT here AFTER you have made your reservation.
The St. Francis Bowling Center is located in the St. Francis school building at
426 S. Osceola Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55102.
Just one block north of the intersection of Randolph and West 7th.
For information or to schedule
a date for your event, call the parish office at (651)228-1169
The Bowling Center is currently closed. We plan to open in 2025 but do not have a date. Once we have a firm opening date, we will begin accepting reservations. We will continue to provide updates here. Feel free to call the parish office if you have any questions at (651) 228-1169. Thank you.
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St. Francis Bowling Center of St. Francis-St. James United School in St. Paul's West Seventh Street neighborhood belongs to an elite club. St. Francis has six lanes and may be one of the last two church bowling centers left in the Twin Cities.
"It was very much a part of the German parishes," says the Rev. Stephen Adrian, pastor of St. Matthew's Church on St. Paul's West Side. Of the 6,022 certified bowling centers in the country, only a few are church-related.
"I don’t even know if we could put a number to it," says Mark Miller, a spokesman for several national bowling organizations based in suburban Milwaukee. Miller figures fewer than 100 church alleys remain, and they run the gamut of faith denominations.
The St. Francis lanes were built along with the school in about 1939, says Marianne Jordan, former parish secretary for St. Francis de Sales Church. The church's pastor at the time was the Rev. James Zachman. He liked to bowl, so he had a bowling alley put in.
Jordan, a lifelong member of the parish and a former bowler remembers the glory years. Boys set the pins by hand, and the girls hung around to watch them. There were men's leagues, women's leagues, seniors' leagues, and open bowling. She bowled mostly in the housewives' league on Wednesday afternoons.