[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 71 (Thursday, June 9, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: June 9, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
ST. ALOYSIUS CHURCH--RESTORATION CELEBRATION
______
HON. ROMANO L. MAZZOLI
of kentucky
in the house of representatives
Thursday, June 9, 1994
Mr. MAZZOLI. Mr. Speaker, the Great Church of St. Aloysius Gonzaga
has stood proudly and nobly on North Capitol Street at I Street since
its dedication in 1859.
At the time of its dedication, the New York Times described it in
these words: ``In internal architectural beauty, it is said not to be
surpassed by any church in the world.''
In its rich history, it has been the mother church for the priests of
the Society of Jesus, more widely known as the Jesuit Fathers.
Moreover, it has been held in its embrace and been the scene of
countless religious and educational ceremonies for all the many
generations of young men attending Gonzaga College High School whose
several buildings, new and old, occupy the same parcel of land as does
St. Aloysius.
St. Aloysius Church has also acted as the parish church for Catholic
Christians in its area of Washington and a place of sanctuary and
comfort to people of all faiths for 135 years.
In recent years, Mr. Speaker, this grand place grew a bit weary and
lost some of this earthly luster, though its heart and soul remained
strong and vibrant. Because of structural and mechanical failures, the
Great Church has been closed to worshipers for the past few years.
Last year, the Reverend Bernard Dooley, S.J., president of Gonzaga
College High School, felt that the time was right for a thorough,
professional, artistic and architecturally sensitive restoration of the
Great Church. Candidly, Mr. Speaker, over the years there have been
efforts to restore St. Aloysius Church which have been well-intentioned
but lacking in grace, and perspective and accomplishment.
Father Dooley in his 20 effective years at the helm of Gonzaga High
School has never left anything to chance. And, the school--which was in
the doldrums in the 1960's when Father Dooley arrived at 19 I Street--
reflects his genius and leadership, and is now bustling with students,
is replete with new, state-of-the-art equipment and facilities, and is
recommitted to religious, educational, and social excellence for its
students for all the years to come.
Father Dooley has approached the task of restoring St. Aloysius
Gonzaga Church with the same zeal, vision, and skill as he has the
revitalization of Gonzaga School. And, so, Mr. Speaker, the renewed and
restored and reborn St. Aloysius Gonzaga Church will be re-dedicated on
June 12, 1994.
The careful, painstaking and artistically superlative restoration
includes the refurbishing of several paintings by Constantine Brumidi,
the renowned artist whose work decorates our own beautiful U.S.
Capitol.
St. Aloysius Gonzaga is the patron saint of youth. But, during its
135 years of existence, St. Aloysius Gonzaga Church has served well
both young and old, Catholic and non-Catholic. And, because of this
grand restoration, St. Aloysius Church is once again able to serve the
people of God of whatever age, and to stand, once more, proud,
beautiful, and welcoming. Congratulations to Father Dooley and to all
whose talents, time, and treasure brought about this great and
wonderful restoration.
Mr. Speaker, I include at this point the text of an article which
appeared in the Washington Times on June 1, 1994, describing the
restoration of St. Aloysius Gonzaga Church.
[From the Washington Times, June 1, 1994]
Restoration of St. Aloysius Gonzaga Church
[By Eleanor Kennelly]
The huge painting inches up the wall as the man with the
rope strains to hoist the heavy load.
Young St. Aloysius Gonzaga, receiving his first Holy
Communion, dangles over the white marble altar. Twelve arms
reach up to guide him carefully into the plaster wall frame.
Protective plastic panels are lifted quickly from the
painting. Done. The sanctuary of St. Aloysius Church rings
with applause.
``It doesn't look like the same painting,'' marvels
architect Franklin Duane, staring up at the saint. ``It was
terribly dirty and rippled from humidity. This painting is so
bright!''
Now, that is.
The painting is the centerpiece of an eight-month
restoration of St. Aloysius, the city's oldest Roman Catholic
church in continuous use. Adjoining Gonzaga College High
School at North Capitol and I streets NW, it opened in 1859;
at the time, its internal beauty was considered unsurpassed
``by any church in the world.''
But poor heating and cooling, decline in use and the
ravages of time changed that.
The vast upper church was rarely used throughout the 1980s
except for big Gonzaga events, such as graduation. It was too
hot there in the summer, too cold in the winter, and the
lights were dim.
For Sunday Mass, a small sanctuary in the basement served a
dwindling number of local parishioners who could never afford
to fix the whole place.
Mr. Duane--an alumnus of Gonzaga, which shares a city block
with St. Aloysius and Jesuit staffers--helped oversee the
restoration, which centers on the altar painting by
Constantino Brumidi, an Italian-born artist best known for
the fresco some 10 blocks away under the U.S. Capitol's dome.
Gonzaga's president, the Rev. Bernard Dooley, raised more
than $1 million from alumni for the restoration. He had
already transformed Gonzaga into one of the most competitive
schools in the Archdiocese of Washington--a school where
students can study the Greek classics and get credit for
working in a soup kitchen.
As shepherd of this flock for the past 20 years, he has
seen Gonzaga build a new conference center, modernize its gym
and buy an old five-story apartment building from the city
and turn it into office and classroom space. (The top floor
is used by Higher Achievement Program, a gifted-and-talented
program for District youths.) It also enlarged the football
field, no minor accomplishment along busy North Capitol
Street.
But one task remained undone: St. Aloysius Church.
Confident that the money would come, Father Dooley told
contractors to start work last year before the cash was in
hand.
The Gonzaga Mother's Club raised $45,000 at a Christmas
dinner-auction to pay for the Brumidi/altar restoration,
which involved designing a new aluminum support for the
piece.
It took Father Dooley less than eight months to raise the
rest.
``I approached about 500 people with letters, phone calls
and visits. I knew I could raise the money because the boys
of Gonzaga have a sense of the sacred,'' says Father Dooley,
who announced last fall that he's stepping down at the end of
this school year.
``Father Dooley brought me into the upper church, and I
looked up in amazement. It was so big. In terrible shape. One
relief column against a wall had so much water damage it had
basically disappeared,'' says Steve Ferrandi, who knocked on
St. Aloysius' door two years ago while canvassing churches
here, trying to drum up business for his Baltimore firm,
Church Services Restoration.
Mr. Ferrandi, whose company T-shirt reads ``We Specialize
in Caring for God's House,'' and his team began work in
October 1993.
The pews came out. The Brumidi painting came down. The
scaffolding went up.
With a ceiling 60 feet above, the altar and an open, airy
nave, it took an erector set of platforms to reach the roof.
Installing giant air-conditioning and heating units and
getting rid of the lead-based paint meant dismantling
elaborate ceiling panels and fancy medallions that had to be
entirely recast--in plaster and fiberglass--and repainted.
Getting the altar painting down and out for restoration
meant taking down an old-fashioned weather wall at the back
of the church. The change opened up the vestibule, bringing
in more light, so the restorers left the wall out for good.
Bringing the priest and congregation closer together, the
trend in new Roman Catholic liturgies, meant removing a
communion rail and extending the sanctuary floor into the
nave.
To match the original stone of the floor, sienna and
travertine marble was cut in Italy, marked for place and
flown in by Lufthansa--all in about 60 days.
When the church was dedicated in 1859, the New York Times
wrote,
``In internal architectural beauty it is said not to be
surpassed by any church in the world.''
But some decorative additions made over the years were
simply ugly. Such as the faux serpentine marble laminate
panels at eye level around the whole nave.
When workers pulled off the laminate to pop holes in the
wall for duct work, they found the outline of a classical
rolling frieze.
Rather than cover it again, Bob Thuman, a Baltimore gilder
who had been an apprentice on a renovation in 1959, went to
work repainting the swirling pattern of flowers and fruits in
the church's new tones of pearl, mushroom and gold.
He also gilded more than 200 flowers the size of dinner
plates, antiqued grapvine molding that climbs the walls of
the sanctuary and gave the columns a faux marbling.
``The old painting scheme reminded me of a `50s Buick,''
Mr. Ferrandi says. ``Very faddish and glitzy. The altar area
was painted bright yellow with blue-green trim. The ceiling
was pink. There was almost no gold in the church, all
silver.''
The restoration committee settled on shades of blue for the
ceiling and the carpet, colors that match the flowing tint in
the baby-blue stained glass.
``We wanted colors that reflected our theme of light and
youthfulness,'' says art dealer Bob Murray, a Gonzaga alumnus
who acted as ``aesthetic director'' of the project. ``The
line of color in the ceiling brings the eye to the dome of
the sanctuary, then to the Brumidi painting, our major focal
point,'' he says.
Skipping around the altar, checking different views, Arthur
Page, chief conservator, seems thrilled.
``They don't get much bigger than this. Remember, this is
an easel painting 15 feet tall. Brumidi painted it on one
piece of canvas in a studio,'' he says.
He explains that the painting appears ``infinitely more
colorful'' because the restorers removed surface grease and
grime as well as a heavy yellow varnish.
``It's obviously the same painting, but it's alive now,''
says Terry Matan of Kensington, a Mother's Club member whose
three sons attended Gonzaga.
``I touched it when they first took it down,'' she says,
``and my hand looked like I had changed a tire.''
``I think it's ab-so-lute-ly beautiful,'' marvels ``Doc''
Watson, who used to sleep at the shelter for the homeless in
the church basement but now helps prepare hot meals there for
others.
Admiring the painting and the church spread before it, he
stands in bluish light cast by a stained glass window of the
infant Jesus 70 feet above the sanctuary.
The infant had been buried under three inches of dirt until
he was rediscovered during the ceiling cleaning, waiting
patiently in his cloud to be rescued.
Mr. Page's assistant, Laurence Ullmann, points to the only
female figure in the painting. ``There were big problems with
the lace headpiece worn by Mrs. Douglas,'' he says. (Mrs.
Stephen Douglas, wife of a senator and a member of the
parish, posed as Aloysius' mother for the painting.
``In an earlier restoration, probably 1959, someone took a
doily and spray-painted her mantilla on. It came off when we
cleaned with organic solvents. We had to repaint the subject
there, reconstruct one priest's cossack and fix his legs.
``Luckily, we had enough information, enough brush strokes,
to pick up the pattern and re-create it from the original,''
he adds.
The final touches are being added to S. Aloysius in time
for Gonzaga's Friday graduation, at which former Education
Secretary William Bennett (Gonzaga '61) will give the
commencement speech.
Two niches in the back of the church, where plastic palm
trees used to stand, are being painted with murals by Armen
Kankanian, an Armenian painter who came to the United States
in 1990.
In the front of the church, a decorative painter from Kiev,
Leonid Kitelman, another recent immigrant, is finishing a
column. ``I am glad my small labor is part of this big
project,'' he says. He and Mr. Kankanian met on this job; now
they're friends.
The restoration has not gone perfectly, though. A worker
who was finishing the ceiling stepped backward * * * and fell
nearly 60 feet to the floor. After several weeks in a coma,
he is recovering at a rehabilitation hospital.
``The amazing thing is that he lived,'' Father Dooley says.
``That is a miracle.''
And the priest turns to look back up at St. Aloysius.
____
Upon This Plot a Church Rose
When Ambrose Lynch donated land at North Capitol and I
streets NW to the Jesuits in the mid-1800s, it was a field on
a country road.
In honor of his son, a pioneering local priest, Lynch gave
the plot for a new Catholic church, rectory and school.
St. Aloysius Church--named for the patron saint of youth
who was studying to become a Jesuit at the time of his early
death from the plague--was completed in 1859.
Though St. Patrick's is the oldest Roman Catholic Church in
Washington, St. Aloysius is the oldest in continuous use.
It was designed by Father Benedict Sestini, a Florentine
philosophy professor at Georgetown University who dabbled in
architecture.
Sestini was friendly with fellow Italian Constantino
Brumidi, a fresco painter who decorated the U.S. Capitol's
walls for 25 years. The architect asked the painter to do a
piece for the new church; Brumidi produced the altar painting
of St. Aloysius.
Three thousand people, including President James Buchanan,
attended the 1859 dedication, according to the New York
Times.
Gonzaga College was originally named Washington Seminary.
It opened in 1821 at F and 10th streets NW as a day school
for lay students and moved 50 years later to I Street. It was
empowered by Congress to grant degrees--hence the name
``college''--but became a secondary school exclusively by the
turn of the century.
The school lays claim to many illustrious graduates,
including former White House spokesman Patrick Buchanan;
former Education Secretary William Bennett; actor John Heard;
the late Jeremiah O'Leary, a former White House correspondent
and columnist for The Washington Times; and Time magazine
write Lance Morrow.
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