January 10 , 2002

THE DECATUR DAILY
by Melanie B. Smith

STAINED GLASS FROM AUSTRIA TO SHINE IN CATHOLIC CHURCH

From a Church of the Annunciation that is passing away, a stained glass window comes to another Church of the Annunciation being born.

 

A van carrying the crated window sections arrived Wednesday in Decatur from a Kansas City, MO, studio. The firm restored the work of art, which workers removed from a former Church of the Annunciation in Kansas City.

Art glazier Patrick Lynch carefully removed antique stained glass sections from wooden crates. He pointed out details and restorative touches to the Rev. Joe Culotta, architects and others connected to Decatur's soon-to-be Church of the Annunciation.

As Lynch held one piece up to the light of a winter sun, a cherub's face shone from a panel that had seemed dark and somber.

Culotta, pastor, and others were excited to see and inspect the sections. They envision them gleaming from a wall in a new church building planned for Spring Avenue Southwest. The facility will be the new home for Decatur's St. Ann and Hartselle's Holy Family Catholic churches, newly united and renamed Annunciation Parish.

Lynch lifted design after design to the light - circular patterns called quatrefoils, angels, Mary and the angel's message that begins "Hail Mary." Green, blue, red, amber and other hues gleamed as he and church workers handled the window pieces.

The window, about 14-by-15 feet when assembled, made its way to Decatur via the Internet in a sequence of events that seem divinely intended.

A church council picked the name Church of the Annunciation several years ago for the unified parish. Culotta said that at a retreat two years ago to help the churches make the transition, a nun suggested that the joint parish needs a new symbol, a new icon. Todd Whatley did an online search and it appeared, a piece of sacred art for sale, a window that depicts the moment when an angel tells Mary that she will give birth to the Savior.

The window was in storage. A Protestant congregation bought a church originally named Annunciation in Kansas City, said Culotta. The Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph decided to build another church more appropriate for inner-city work, he said.

Before the diocese sold the building, it removed two windows, crated them and advertised them for sale. A diocesan web site described them as "seeking a new home."

The windows date to 1924, according to church archives. Tyrol Studio crafted them in Innsbruck, Austria, according to Hopcroft Stained Glass Studios, which restored the works and brought them to Decatur. Hopcroft's president described them as "among the finest of their type," an exquisitely detailed style called the Munich School.

The cost might have kept Decatur parish from getting the artwork. But the former bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Birmingham, Bishop Raymond Boland, is now bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph, and he gave Annunciation a great deal, said Culotta.

"It was valued at more than $200,000," Culotta said. "We purchased it for $100,000, and they are letting us pay, interest free, $10,000 a year for 10 years."

The money will benefit a capital campaign for the new St. Monica parish in Kansas City, the first Catholic church built in the city's urban core in more than 50 years, and will serve a growing black community, according to the diocese.

Culotta said the window is in excellent shape and needed only $7,300 in repairs.

Kenny Tyler of Davis Architects in Birmingham, who was at the uncrating, said that such a detailed work would have ordinarily been out of the church's budget. He said it's not often that a church today will invest in an expense like pictorial stained glass, but the Catholic Church has shown great interest in art and history.

"They've pulled a beautiful piece of texture from the past and put it into the new design. The mix of old and new gives an interesting blend," he said.

Neil Davis, owner of the firm and Annunciations architect, knew about the window from the start, and it worked with the design, said Tyler.

Workers will frame the window in mahogany and place it in the Daily Chapel of Annunciation Church's first phase. It will be visible from a vestibule and from Spring Avenue. Crews will later move it to a permanent sanctuary.

The parish hopes to break ground this spring with the initial phase finished by the summer of 2003.

Meanwhile, the church is storing the re-crated window in a building of attorney's Mark and Gay Maloney, members of the church.