Finding new use for magnificent churches a challenge

CLEVELAND — Freelance architectural historian Tim Barrett says it’s a challenge to raise awareness about the architectural magnificence of this city’s greatest Roman Catholic churches. Tucked among city neighborhoods, the churches aren’t might not be as visible as other prominent landmarks. But when Barrett brings a tour group inside a church such as St. Colman’s, […]

(RNS4-APR15) Sister Mary Beth Gray, right, practices the piano before Mass at St. Colman Church in Cleveland, which is scheduled for closure. For use with RNS-CHURCH-REUSE, transmitted April 15, 2009. Religion News Service photo by Gus Chan / The Plain Dealer.

(RNS4-APR15) Sister Mary Beth Gray, right, practices the piano before Mass at St. Colman Church in Cleveland, which is scheduled for closure. For use with RNS-CHURCH-REUSE, transmitted April 15, 2009. Religion News Service photo by Gus Chan / The Plain Dealer.

CLEVELAND — Freelance architectural historian Tim Barrett says it’s a challenge to raise awareness about the architectural magnificence of this city’s greatest Roman Catholic churches.

Tucked among city neighborhoods, the churches aren’t might not be as visible as other prominent landmarks. But when Barrett brings a tour group inside a church such as St. Colman’s, he says the building speaks for itself.


“If you’re not moved by it,” he says, “I’m sorry, you better check into a hospital.”

With soaring twin bell towers and a limestone facade framed by massive Corinthian columns, St. Colman towers over modest, wood-frame houses like a Baroque cathedral transplanted from Rome.

It’s also on a list of dozens of churches that are scheduled to close as the Diocese of Cleveland — like other rust-belt dioceses — grapples with dwindling finances, a shortage of priests and a church population that’s shrinking and moving to the suburbs.

While the closings present parishes with wrenching changes, they also raise urgent questions about historic preservation. Can the community hang on to beautiful buildings that help give neighborhoods their character, not to mention part of its soul? Can the churches be saved?

The threatened churches in Cleveland and elsewhere hold several lessons: historical reminders of the American church’s immigrant past; a bricks-and-mortar tour de force of art history; and the challenges of maintaining a sacred space that is no longer reserved for sacred acts.

Indeed, churches across the U.S. have been converted to new uses as condos, restaurants, performing arts centers, boutiques or artist colonies. But finding new owners for a large number of Catholic churches all at once, in a weak real estate market to boot, won’t be easy.


“It’s a bit overwhelming, to be truthful with you,” said John Maimone, finance director for the diocese.

The most significant churches are legacies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, built by immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Hungary, Poland and other European countries.

As descendants of the founders moved to new communities in the suburbs, the urban parishes thinned out, and remaining parishioners have struggled to maintain buildings with aging boilers, leaky roofs and crumbling plaster.

In the case of the most magnificent churches, finding a new owner isn’t the only issue; it’s preserving their integrity as unified works of art.

Three parishes that are scheduled to be closed — St. Colman, St. Ignatius of Antioch and St. James the Greater — were all finished between 1918 and 1935, and each employs paintings, architecture and sculpture to enlighten, educate and inspire the faithful.

St. Ignatius evokes the early Middle Ages with stylistic elements including a soaring central nave proportioned like that of a Roman basilica. St. James draws on influences from a group of 12th-century churches in Sicily, giving it an exotic, Mediterranean air.


And St. Colman, built by second-generation Irish immigrant families to proclaim their rising status in Cleveland, is lavishly appointed with elaborate marble sculptures.

Appeals are pending at all three churches. Their fate will certainly be on the minds of parishioners during this Eastertide season.

“Easter is a glorious celebration for the Catholic Church, but it’s going to be muted this year while we’re still waiting,” said Sister Ann Kilbane, the retired former parish-life coordinator at St. Colman who helped supervise $700,000 worth of repairs over the past decade.

As churches are closed — Bishop Richard Lennon has set an end date of June 30, 2010 — church officials will assess the feasibility of removing sacred accoutrements such as stained glass, altars and sculptures. Some materials will be removed so they can move along with parishioners to new churches. Other items could be sold outside the region.

“It’s a very careful, case-by-case process, so that we are not uniformly taking out windows and altars,” said Maimone, the diocesan finance director.

Finding new locations for elaborate stained-glass windows, such as the vast, high-Gothic-style windows at St. Ignatius of Antioch, could be difficult, because they’re proportioned to fit a specific architectural context, Maimone said.


As for the buildings, they’ll lose their religious status and become taxable properties, potentially costing the diocese millions of dollars a year until they’re sold off.

Under the best of circumstances, other religious denominations could acquire buildings. Otherwise, churches could be sold to secular users, with limitations against uses the church considers “sordid.”

Landmark status enjoyed by some churches offers a modicum of protection against severe alteration or demolition. The city can protect the exterior of a designated landmark by withholding permits for construction or demolition. Yet the city can’t protect interiors. But City Councilman Brian Cummins has proposed expanding the city’s landmarks law to include interiors, as well.

The idea provoked a sharp response from Robert Tayek, director of media and public relations for the diocese. The proposed legislation, he said, is “nothing short of an attempt to exert direct government control over the very symbols and elements utilized by the church in its most sacred and defining act of worship: the Mass.”

Local preservationists, meanwhile, are suggesting that churches could be mothballed rather than demolished. Yet magnificent churches carry magnificent costs: St. Ignatius and St. James need new roofs. Both were fitted with terra cotta tile roofs that have done poorly in Cleveland’s punishing climate.

Even a church in good condition, such as St. Colman, faces financial challenges. Winter heating bills reach $6,000 a month, Sister Kilbane said.


The church’s uncertain fate has caused a spike in attendance at Sunday Mass.

“More and more people are coming back to the church because they think its days are numbered,” Kilbane said. “People are sorry, but they’re also very hopeful.”

(Steven Litt is the architecture critic for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland.)

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