Kvilda originally was a village composed timber houses, even the presbytery and the church of St. Stephen with the Baroque cupola were made of wood. After the great fire of 1889 that destroyed almost the whole village, new brick houses were built in here and the burnt down church was replaced in 1894 by a pseudo-Gothic building with the typical Šumava shingle roof. Building of the church was managed by Jan Štěrbík, while the funding was provided by the Earl František Thun von Hohenstein.