Georgia Bulletin

The Newspaper of the Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta

  • On a balmy Jan. 13 morning Avery Wooten, the owner of Foothill Sand To Glass of Union Grove, N.C., works from a scaffold as he removes one of the final stained glass window panels from St. Joseph Church, Athens. This particular window was a depiction of Jesus walking on water. Photo By Michael Alexander
  • St. Joseph Church parishioner Bernard Wysocki cuts the extruded polystyrene insulation that serves as a protective barrier inside the wooden crates that hold the stained glass window panels. Photo By Michael Alexander
  • Avery Wooten, the owner of Foothill Sand To Glass of Union Grove, N.C., uses a hammer and pry bar to remove a section of stained glass from one of the last three remaining large windows in the church. Despite the tools he uses, Wooten said his work is more like surgery than demolition. Photo By Michael Alexander
  • Michael Farmer, an employee of Foothill Sand To Glass, works from the outside to remove one of the stained glass window panels from St. Joseph Church, Athens. On the other side of the window is company owner Avery Wooten. The Jan. 13 effort marked the removal of the last three large windows, looming approximately 10 feet in height, from the church. Photo By Michael Alexander
  • Like many others around the church, these stained glass window panels, labeled with their location, lean up against a pew inside the sanctuary before they are packed away. Photo By Michael Alexander
  • Wooten removes another section of stained glass from one of the last three large windows remaining in the church. Photo By Michael Alexander
  • Avery Wooten holds the final stained glass window panel removed from St. Joseph’s Church on Jan. 13. It came from the last of three large windows, looming approximately 10 feet in height, facing the Prince Avenue side of the church. Looking on is Marianne Parr, a local stained glass artist who is restoring the windows. Photo By Michael Alexander
  • Stained glass window panels rest on a table before they are packed in the protected crate. Photo By Michael Alexander
  • Bernard Wysocki, left, carefully lets a stained glass panel down in its protected wooden crate with help from Marianne Parr, a local stained glass artist who is restoring the windows. Photo By Michael Alexander
  • Foothill Sand To Glass employee David Mitchell removes the T-bars from the window frames after all the stained glass window panels have been removed, so the windows can be recovered with Lexan polycarbonate sheets. Photo By Michael Alexander
  • (Clockwise, from top right) Foothill Sand To Glass employees Michael Farmer, Avery Wooten and David Mitchell load the wooden crates, packed with labeled stained glass window panels, onto a trailer where they were later taken to be stored. Photo By Michael Alexander

On a balmy Jan. 13 morning Avery Wooten, the owner of Foothill Sand To Glass of Union Grove, N.C., works from a scaffold as he removes one of the final stained glass window panels from St. Joseph Church, Athens. This particular window was a depiction of Jesus walking on water. Photo By Michael Alexander

Moving stained glass windows a delicate part of Athens church relocation

By ANDREW NELSON, Staff Writer | Published January 26, 2017

ATHENS—As the St. Joseph Church community leaves its century-old home on Prince Avenue, the parish’s treasures are moving too.

Workers took out nearly two dozen neo-Gothic stained glass windows recently to preserve them until a new church is built on its Epps Bridge Parkway campus on the edge of Athens.

Clear plastic covering replaced the ornate windows as the pieces of art were dismantled and tucked into protective wooden boxes with care.

Looking down inside a wooden crate you can see the panels of stained glass protected with extruded polystyrene insulation. They were lined up in the back of the St. Joseph Church sanctuary until they were transported to a place of storage. After some restoration, the windows will eventually be reinstalled in the new church to be built on the Epps Bridge Parkway site, where the school is currently located. Photo By Michael Alexander

“We’d promised them that the things that are important to them, we’d bring them along. They are special to the people,” said Father David McGuinness, pastor.

A preservationist will inspect and repair the windows between the dismantling and a future installation to keep them for future generations.

The windows mean so much to the community as they inspire people, said Pete Konenkamp, a 20-year member of the congregation. The life of Jesus is shown in the windows.

“We long ago outgrew this space. But there are so many special memories, my son’s first Communion. My step-daughter was married here,” said Konenkamp.

The former St. Joseph Church and School sat on a six-acre plot in downtown Athens that Catholics purchased in 1873. It is being purchased by Homes Urban, a South Carolina firm. Plans are for the former church to be used as a sit-down restaurant and 126 apartments built on the site.

The Epps Bridge Parkway property already is home to the parish school, since the 2012-2013 school year. All worship is now also taking place on the new campus. The only activity still held at Prince Avenue is St. Joseph Charities.

Father McGuinness said the parish has more room to accommodate the various language groups and ministries by moving five miles away to nearly 47 acres. There are more facilities for the parishioners to come together to know each other and more opportunities to participate in spiritual events together, such as Stations of the Cross, he said.

The sale price is about $5.25 million. The proceeds will help pay for a future church. The goal is to build the church without taking on debt, said Father McGuinness.

About 2,000 people attend one of the seven weekend Masses. The worship now takes place in the parish center where temporary chairs are set up.

A special Mass to decommission the Prince Avenue church building is expected to take place before the sale is completed in March.

Windows’ origins are unknown

There’s mystery surrounding the windows. Part of the refurbishment project will be to trace the history of the brightly colored windows.

This stained glass image of an angel holding a chalice is one of the four smaller windows at St. Joseph Church, Athens, that Foothill Sand To Glass company came back to remove the week of Jan. 15. The church’s stained glass windows date back to 1909. Photo By Michael Alexander

“(The windows) were almost certainly made by German craftsman but not necessarily in Germany,” said Konenkamp.

The church was built in 1912 when all of Georgia was part of the Diocese of Savannah. The windows arrived a few years later. A search of the diocesan archives did not shed light on where they came from. Parish records are also silent. An early pastor was fond of traveling in the Northeast so that’s the area which people consider the most likely site of the windows’ craftsmen, said Konenkamp.

As workers removed the windows, Marianne Parr, of Parr Glass Design, helped to oversee the packing in the custom-made boxes with protective stuffing. Each was marked identifying the window and where it came from in the church. In place of the windows, workers from Foothill Sand to Glass, a North Carolina company, put clear plastic in the frames to keep out the weather.

The Stained Glass Association of America identified them as neo-Gothic windows, meaning they are decorative windows created in the early 20th century to complement church sanctuaries. They use shards of glass held together by lead to create the image.

It will be Parr’s task to examine them in detail. She will reinforce the weak spots, where wind, rain and the sun damaged both the windows and the lead channels in them. Parr also expects to replace some of the smaller pieces of glass. She will do the work in a special studio on the parish campus, where she expects to work during the next year.

Parr said stained glass windows are fading out of favor. First, fewer churches are being built as the number of people attending religious services declines, but also fewer churches are investing in creating the expensive windows, she said. St. Joseph is making an important commitment by restoring them, she said.

“I love the history,” said Parr. “This is remarkable glass of this style. A lot of people have said we don’t know what it is doing in Athens, Georgia. It’s part of the cultural history.”