Adrian Wewer, O.F.M. (April 14, 1836 – March 15, 1914), was a German-born Franciscanlay brother who was the architect of more than 100 churches, college buildings, seminaries, schools, friaries, convents, and hospitals throughout the United States. He primarily worked in the Neo-Gothic style of architecture then popular.
The first Friars Minor arrived that same year, and settled in Teutopolis, Illinois. Wewer was one of a group of five friars who arrived in November 1862 to assist with projects of the friars in Illinois and Missouri. He was initially based at St. Anthony of Padua Parish in St. Louis, Missouri, where he designed the church built 1864-1869,[2] after he had built his first church in Trowbridge, Illinois, in Shelby County, in 1864. He also participated in the design of the interior altars and furnishings of the first St. Francis Solanus Church in Quincy, Illinois. After that church was demolished in 1887, the altars were moved to the new church.[1]
Wewer's work was so prolific and well appreciated, that, on the occasion of his Golden Jubilee as a member of the Order in 1908, he received a personal letter of appreciation from Pope Pius X.[1] He was later sent to San Francisco, where he died in 1914.
