St. Alphonsus Liguori Catholic Church’s stained glass windows desperately need repair. The church recently received a $500,000 grant to help restore, clean, re-lead and reseal the large, multipaned structures.
The predominantly African American Catholic church in north St. Louis at Grand and Cook avenues was one of 30 Black churches nationwide awarded funding from a $8.5 million grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation through its African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.
The Black church is a living testimony to the achievements of the Black community, and preserving its history and culture is critically important to understanding American history, said Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
“[St. Alphonsus] stands as a living testimony and is this sublime and handsome piece of monumental architecture that tells a profound story about the Catholic Church, about a Black religious community and about St Louis,” he said.
The historic church was founded in 1866 by the Redemptorists, an order of Roman Catholic priests who minister to neglected populations. The church began building a stone structure for the community in 1867 and completed it in 1872. Ahead of the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, a German company designed the church’s stained glass windows. The window company displayed a sign at the fair to draw visitors to see their colorful artwork at the church.
St. Alphonsus Ligouri, also known as the “Rock” Church, has been through many disasters, including wind and sun damage, harsh storms, environmental pollution and a 5-alarm fire that burned the roof and ceiling and damaged the inside. Its 120-year-old iconic windows need repair beyond routine maintenance. The grant will restore about 15 of its 54 windows.
The windows shed light into the Black congregation and give hope to the community, said the Rev. Rodney Olive, the church’s acting pastor.
“Once you take 120 years of dust and grind off of the windows, you see the colors, and the windows just come alive,” he said. “They're all beautiful in their own way.”
To the community and parishioners, the artful windows tell the story of God and his love for humanity.
“You can walk around the church — looking at the windows — and you can see scripture. When you talk about the birth of Jesus, you can reflect the whole passage of the infancy narrative by just looking at the windows,” Olive said. “It's all there, and that's the beauty of art. It tells a story in pictures, not just in words.”
Olive said that in addition to window repair, the church needs HVAC units, new equipment and electrical and engineering work totaling $1.5 million. St. Alphonsus Ligouri started a capital campaign this year to raise the funds over the next five years.
“When you look at a church, probably I'd say about 70% of our congregation are retired, so they're on fixed incomes,” he said. “There have been many nights where I'd be sitting outside in the back, and I say, ‘Lord, I need a blessing for this church.’”
Church officials applied multiple times for the preservation grant over the past three years but have not received any award money until this year. After a seven-month evaluation process, St. Alphonsus received the grant to help it respond to its immediate restoration needs.
Black church preservation funding is essential because many historic churches are deficient in funding to help with maintenance, environmental contaminants and threats of demolition, Leggs said.
“If we didn't act urgently, many historic Black churches would be erased from the landscape and lost,” he said. “We wanted to ensure that we could support communities in retaining the cultural heritage and legacies and also finding new ways to ensure that these historic churches are adapted for broader community programming and education opportunities.”
Leggs said historic preservation — specifically in the Black community — creates jobs, rebuilds communities and reaffirms their resilience.
Through the program, the grant funds will provide endowment and financial sustainability, organizational capacity building, project planning, programming and interpretation and capital projects. The Anna Bell Chapel AME Church, through the New Haven Preservation Society in New Haven, Missouri, is the only other church in the state awarded funds.
“We as a nation, we are rich in diverse history, but we are often poor in funding and protecting America's diverse history,” Leggs said. “We want to ensure that historically Black churches are resourced, both financially and with the technical expertise to be able to preserve stained glass windows at the Rock that are more than just an architectural attribute. These iconic pieces of artwork represent something much more substantial and lasting for this community.”
