The St. Ansgarius Swedish Church celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in its church at 99 North Sedgwick Street. It is the oldest Swedish church in Chicago. In 1849 a group of Swedes belonging to the English St. James Church decided to start a church of their own where they could use their mother tongue.

On March 5, 1849 the group heard the first sermon preached in Swedish, in a little house on Indiana Street [Grand Avenue], and there a subscription list was started to raise funds for a church. Among the active members of the group was one John Carl Frederick Policarpus von Schneidau, who was a refugee nobleman from Sweden. Schneidau had been exiled because he married a Jewess.

The first St. Ansgarius Church was built on Indiana and Franklin Streets, with a seating capacity of about three hundred. A Swedish church at this time was necessary because there were about 1800 Scandinavians living around the church.

The fire of 1871 destroyed the church and a new church was built at a cost of $30,000.

Jenny Lind is a figure in the history of the church because in 1851 she donated one thousand dollars to the building of the church.