Photography by Jason Gray
Detail of the Virgin Mary and Christ from the Nativity by Emil Frei
I’ll be honest: I had always assumed one day I would turn the corner onto Hebert Street and see a huge scatter of bricks in the middle of the road, and realize that one of my favorite churches in St. Louis had collapsed after a particularly violent thunderstorm.
For the first time in years, I'm hopeful that will not be the fate of the former St. Augustine’s Roman Catholic Church, once one of the largest German parishes on the North Side of St. Louis. Over the last five years, copper thieves and vandals had certainly tried their best to make sure my prayers would never be answered.
Enter Brittany Breeden and Project Augustine. I first met with Breeden and her husband, Chris Gloyd, earlier this year, and she told me of her plans to purchase the church from the small congregation that had met in the giant church up until a few years ago. Breeden summarized the first time she saw the church in person:
“I grew up in St. Louis and I had moved out of the area for a while. I found this building online and I decided to take a look. You can see it from miles away. I already knew it was a pillar in this neighborhood and I was just dumbfounded by the architecture. So I snapped my first picture and I decided I was going to help save this place.”
I left that first meeting hopeful, and then just two weeks ago, I learned Breeden had been successful: St. Augustine’s former owners had agreed to transfer the title over to her.
“I was in a significant car accident with my husband in November of [2019]. After that, it was a life-changing period of time, and it made me think, What do I want to focus my energy on? I struggled with [the project] for a while because I wasn’t getting a lot of traction on it. After a long time of thinking it, I said to myself, ‘I’ve devoted so much time on it. It seemed like a waste to give up on it.’ I kept pushing forward on it, but it was a struggle for a while.
Before I knew it, I was meeting Breeden, Gloyd, and noted historic rehabilitation architect Paul Hohmann last Saturday under the soaring roof of the church. Photographer Jason Gray documented the condition of a building that has not been used in years and has been savaged by copper theft and vandalism.
Photography by Jason Gray
View of South side of the interior of St. Augustine
I say under the soaring roof—and not the soaring vaults—of the venerable Gothic Revival church because the delicate wood and plaster ceilings have sadly collapsed, leaving the planking under the original slate shingles exposed. The elegant wooden vaults lie in a huge pile, presenting a formidable challenge to remove the tons of debris. I would imagine that many readers, looking at the photos of the interior, consider this a lost cause. However, when I asked Hohmann—a veteran of the successful rehabbing of the Paul Brown, Arcade, and Metropolitan buildings, among many other historic renovations in St. Louis—his professional opinion about the overall structural stability and long-term outlook, he was optimistic.
“I’m super excited that [Breeden] has bought the building, really at the right time before it got to the point before it would be too late. Two weeks ago, I thought this was going to be the next Bethlehem Lutheran [a historic church demolished nearby in 2014] with the roof caving in and the bulldozers coming,” Hohmann said, “But now I feel like there’s hope once they fix the roof, which the majority’s intact. There’s a little section that’s peeling in, but it’s definitely fixable.”
Looking around the sanctuary, we also discussed the seemingly precarious condition of the massive piers that hold up the roof. At first glance, they appear to be shattered, and the wooden interiors of the columns rotting away. But Hohmann and I both noted that the entire church is in fact supported by a steel skeleton that is partially obscured by brickwork and the wood wrapping the steel inside those columns.
“Our initial reaction was the roof was going to go at any minute. The columns looked like they were going to cave in,” Breeden remembers, “But we’ve gotten some engineers in here and were able to see there’s a steel structure.”
“There’s some masonry work that needs to be done,” Hohmann explains, gesturing to the piers holding up the choir loft, “There needs to be an inspection of the steel. At this point it certainly looks intact and repairable. The brick provides fireproofing, but it’s largely cosmetic.”
Finally, I asked Hohmann: Is it worth saving, even if the plan is to stabilize and not a complete restoration?
“Absolutely, he stressed. “It’s not too far gone. Obviously, to restore this [church] fully it would cost millions and millions of dollars. To actually see the bones of the church and its structure is just as interesting as seeing the plaster vaults that were there before.”
“We’re not going to restore the plaster and all the grandeur of a Roman Catholic church,” Breeden told me, recognizing the sheer cost of a complete renovation versus stabilization. “We’re going to keep what vaulting and architectural details that remain [when] we turn it into a community center. Now the idea is sort of fluid because we want to keep it about what the community wants and needs, rather than what we see and envision.”
While it might not look like it from some of the surrounding blocks, the north side of Hebert Street by the church is still a vibrant enclave of several dozen residents, and Breeden recognizes that.
“We do want to hear from the people now, what they want and need. We want people who actually live in the area to have something they are proud of and be a part of. A lot of the struggles in this community are due to a lack of resources, so what we’d like to do is change that by offering resources for the things they don’t have: education programs, arts, music. I want people to see beyond the stigma that North St. Louis has and see beyond that perception. That’s the goal.”
I asked Breeden if she was interested in hearing from past parishioners or their families who may have attended St. Augustine. Judging from the fact the parish once boasted thousands of members, there are surely tens of thousands of people throughout the St. Louis region and beyond with ties to the church.
“Absolutely. Our goal is to honor as much of the history of this place as we can,” Breeden responded. “So any stories people may have from the community are welcome. If you attended church here, if your family member did, if you have a cool story about the building you want to share, if you just thought it looked cool and took a picture of it, that’s fine. We want to hear and see everything and see the photos and things you have—so we can honor the building and what it was and what it will be in the future.”
Photography by Jason Gray
View of the interior of St. Augustine looking toward the apse from the upper balcony
I also asked Breeden how interested members of the community or former parishioners could help the effort to reopen the church as a community center. Donations are welcome, she said, but a big portion of this project is going to be the removal of the rubble from the collapsed vaults. "It’s an incredible feat just to get this place cleaned out. Any supplies along those lines, we’re happy to receive,” she said.
I would be remiss not to mention the stunning Emil Frei & Associates stained glass windows, many of which remain in excellent condition, protected wisely from the weather and vandalism behind plywood for much of the last three decades. While, sadly, several of the windows on the south side of the church—including a remarkable and incredibly beautiful depiction of the Nativity in the south transept—have been damaged, their original color still shone on the sunny Saturday. In fact, having seen my fair share of stained glass throughout St. Louis, including much of the work of Emil Frei and his family, the work in St. Augustine’s is easily some of the family’s best. The rich reds, aquamarines, and blues of the glass look just as vibrant today as I’m sure they did when they were brand-new. I was drawn to one angel high up in a window, who bore a shield with a phoenix. While the phoenix is a Greek and Roman mythological bird who was reborn from its own ashes, it also became a symbol of the Resurrection in Christianity. I have been waiting so long for the resurrection of St. Augustine’s, and I feel that finally, at long last, it is here.
