St. Alphonsus Liguori “Rock” Church receives $500,000 grant for stained glass window restoration

St. Alphonsus Liguori “Rock” Church Parish has received a $500,000 grant to go toward preserving the church’s 120-plus-year-old stained-glass windows.

The parish was one of 30 Black churches across the country — and the only Catholic church — to receive a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation through its African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. The grant program is part of the fund’s Preserving Black Churches project.

The windows were created in Munich by German firm Meyer &Company and installed ahead of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. The grant will help clean, restore, re-lead and reseal about 15 of the 54 windows in the church.

Shannon Horstmann, a “Rock” parishioner for nearly 25 years who submitted several requests for the grant over the past few years, said she was awestruck when she got the news.

Horstmann sat in the back of church near one of the windows during Sunday Mass after she found out the news in late February, “just silently with tears in my eyes looking at the sun coming through the windows,” she said. “This is such a huge honor for the Black community, for the Catholic community and for the Black Catholic community. The historic, spiritual and cultural aspects — there are so many components that make up our church.”

In addition to window restoration, the church needs new HVAC units, a new roof on a building that houses the parish’s offices and meeting space, tuck pointing, plaster work and painting, among other needs. The parish launched a $1.5 million capital campaign last summer to raise funds by 2030.

The Redemptorists were invited to St. Louis in 1866 by Archbishop Peter Richard Kenrick, and they purchased three-and-a-half acres at Grand and Cook avenues in the north St. Louis. Construction began the following year, and the church was officially named for St. Alphonsus Liguori, founder of the Redemptorist congregation.

The construction workers who built the Gothic stone church and the limestone rock wall that surrounds it gave it the nickname the “Rock” Church. St. Alphonsus Church was dedicated on Aug. 3, 1872.

The parish has seen its share of disasters over the years, including a five-alarm fire in 2007 that caused extensive damage to the roof and ceiling and damaged the inside. (While fighting the fire, then-fire chief Sherman George instructed firefighters not to touch the stained-glass windows, which helped prevent further damage.) In 2021, a weather-related emergency prompted the parish to repair part of the historic limestone wall surrounding the church.

While the church and its trademark wall is of historical significance, the parish is an important part of the life of the Church in terms of its identity and spirituality from an African-American perspective, said Father Rodney Olive, CSsR, who was named parochial administrator about six months ago.

The parish “brings a richness to this Church and this archdiocese in terms of it’s own influence and spirituality from an African-American perspective,” he said. “It enriches the diversity of the Church in all its different forms and speaks to how God reaches out to the cultures and spirituality of different people.”

In addition to ongoing church ministries, the parish also has an extensive outreach to the community, including a regular food pantry, mobile health clinic visits, voter registrations and neighborhood cleanups, among other activities. The parish also serves as a host site for Grill to Glory, which is part of an effort by the Urban League to deliver resources to families in neighborhoods surrounding churches.

“Black congregations are full of people who have a history with these churches — their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were part of those churches,” said Monica Huddleston, chair of the finance and administration commission. “With many of them, they were and are still gathering places for African Americans who were looking to improve a community.”

While parishioners come from many parts of the archdiocese, the church serves as an anchor for the Grand Center and surrounding neighborhoods on the northside. Huddleston, who has been a parishioner since the 1990s, said she’s witnessed neighborhood improvements over the years, “and that’s only going to happen if churches like this stay,” she said. “Preserving Black churches is more than just preserving historic buildings. They’re really most of these communities that they sit in.”

Restoration campaign

Donations are needed toward further restoration efforts at St. Alphonsus Liguori “Rock” Church. Checks may be made payable to St. Alphonsus Liguori “Rock” Catholic Church (Memo: Window Restoration), 1118 N Grand Blvd, St. Louis, MO 63106. To donate online, visit www.stalphonsusrock.org/restoreourwindows.