[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.

                          ____________________