If you like this article, read more about Milwaukee-area history and architecture in the hundreds of other similar articles in the Urban Spelunking series here.
The Henry C. Koch-designed Gesu Church, 1145 W. Wisconsin Ave., completed in 1894, is currently undergoing a more than $10 million restoration that began last year.
The task is a huge one, bigger than I realized before I was invited by UWM School of Architecture and Urban Planning Prof. Matt Jarosz to join a tour of the work with a group of students.
You can read more about the history and architecture of the church in this Urban Spelunking story.
The renovation is the first major one in the church since the 1960s, when new pews were installed, the sanctuary was painted and changes were made to the St. Joseph altar.
The current work will replace the pews with ones based on the original 1890s design; the baptismal font will be moved to the back of the sanctuary where it will be joined by a new immersion pool and ambry; the flooring will be replaced; the narthex will get updates to create more gathering space and to make the entrance and exit of churchgoers safer; the walls and ceiling will be repainted; the sound system will be upgraded and there will be bluetooth transmitters installed in the floor to help transmit audio to hearing aids; security cameras will be installed to allow the church to remain open to the public all day long and the fire detection system will be upgraded; there’s all-new lighting with LEDs and some new lighting, too, along with electrical upgrades; and the altar will get accessible ramps on either side and be restored to its pre-1960s look.
The work kicked off in September in the lower chapel with sanctuary floor reinforcement work. In November, when that work was completed, the sanctuary was closed and scaffolding filled the entire space from floor to ceiling and the congregation moved its services to the lower chapel.
The renovation is expected to be completed this coming November.
Leading our tour was CG Schmidt’s site superintendent Pete Burrie, who met us in front of the altar and introduced architect Paul Barribeau, who is the Religious Studio Director at Groth Design Group.
“We've been on this project for a little over three years,” Barribeau explains. “Originally, we were hired as a liturgical consultant for the church. The initial concern that the owner had was the flooring, which kept warping and pulling up and creating hazards.
“While they were removing pews to do the floor, the project blossomed into replacing the pews, painting the worship space, replacing all of the lighting, which was installed in the 1960s, upgrading the AV sound system, and then adding liturgical features of immersion font in the back, which is more consistent with Catholic thought currently and ambry.”
Then, of course, there is the altar work.
“We’re restoring and moving the tabernacle, which was relocated in the ‘60s to a side altar, but was originally behind the main altar at the front of the space,” Barribeau says. “We're moving it back.”
The accessibility piece added a bit of complication, Barribeau explains.
“One of the more complicated parts of the project is the original sanctuary level, where the altar is, was not accessible,” he says. “The Archdiocese in Milwaukee wants platforms to be accessible because of the age of many of the priests, and so we had to design ramps on both sides that would be compatible with the aesthetics of the space.
“We're doing that by removing the former stone communion rail that used to run the entire length of the front of the space and using those as railings as barriers for the ramps. As a part of that, we had to take the wood floor and beef it up from below because the marble rails, which were on a column line, are now moving about five feet, six feet farther out where there's no support in the basement.”
With that work completed, the scaffolding was erected in the sanctuary and it's a beast. Project documents estimated this framework allowing workers to access the ceiling and the high walls would cost about $700,000.
Last week, Burrie walked every step of the scaffolding pathways and he said it took him about four-and-a-half-hours.
That – and the photos here – should give you a sense of how massive the steel structure is.
We climb up a couple levels to get a rare close-up look at some of the stained glass windows and we see things most people never get a chance to glimpse, such as the detail in the faces of the Magi in a window in the east transept, or the striking image of St. Michael battling satan in a north-facing window in the west transept.
We can also see the detail painting work taking place by a team from Conrad Schmitt Studios.
At the very top of the scaffolding is a level that allows access to the ceiling.
One can't stand upright in this area, and I’d guess at least some of the painting happens with the artists lying on their backs ... a little insight into how Michelangelo touched up the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at The Vatican.
Making our way back down, we meet Emmanuel Fritz of Conrad Schmitt Studios who explains the process of painting the ornamental detail inside the sanctuary.
Though the pattern is not a strict recreation of what existed previously, Burrie says that historical photos and other documentation was consulted in an effort to bring back to the interior the Gothic feel that was painted over in the 1960s.
“It's a lovely color palette,” says Fritz. “Very historic, kind of timeless-looking, which is really nice update from what it had been. Our big feature is going to be all the vines up (on the walls) in the sanctuary.”
The first step was for the Conrad Schmitt team to scrape and repair any damaged plaster.
Fritz received from Groth a general rendering of how the space was to look. Based on that and consultations with the design team, full-size mock-ups were made and visually tested in the space. Because the motifs will be painted far above eye level, the testing in place is key.
“The first mock-up was when we realized that our initial design was maybe a little too fine to be able to read well from the ground,” Fritz says. “So we thickened up some of the elements and then we put that up and reviewed it from the ground with the client to make sure that they were fine with those changes.
“Then we went from there into a more refined set of mock-ups. Once I was happy with that we started making stencils.”
Though stencils used to be cut by hand in a very slow, exacting process, now they are outsourced to a company that has a cutting machine that’s even more exact and much more efficient.
While stencils are used as a foundation for the painted motifs, much of the work is also done by hand and, Fritz says, the work isn't always as easy as simply using a one-size-fits-all stencile.
Painting the motifs, he says with a smile, “is right now kind of the bane of my existence, because I'm dealing with this old building where we have all of the variance in the architecture. None of it is the same.”
Pointing to the spandrel flanking an arch on the east side of the nave, he explains, “My most extreme example is a headache and I've got to have fun with it. I have my smallest half (spandrel) in the building, next to my largest half in the building, and I have to use this design to make it look like the vines are like the same. That's my big challenge out here.”
I ask how he tinkers the two halves so that they don’t look weird and out of scale to viewers below.
“I measured everything, found a median and I've based stencils off of that. I have actually three sizes for each step in the stencils. I just kind of scale up and down from there. Unfortunately if I have something that's that normal width, it's rarely the normal height. So I have to kind of mix and match all of my sizes to get it all to kind of fit in close.
“Then from there I have tricks I can do where I move the stencil a little bit just to help with that illusion. So long as like my main features end up where they need to be, our eye is going to be forgiving on some other stuff.”
Fritz says plaster repairs began the second week of January and he expects the painting to be completed by mid-June.
Next, we rejoin Groth Design Group out in the narthex, where they explain changes they’ve designed to make getting in and out of the building’s main entrance safer and easier.
Groth Project Designer Zach Thiel points out that the stairs up to the sanctuary from Wisconsin Avenue ran the entire length of the narthex and were interrupted by huge columns plunked right onto the stairs.
“Someone coming in off the street theoretically could walk up the stairs and then run into the column,” he says. “There was nothing stopping you from coming up the stairs ... then boom.
“Also one of the things we wanted to do was give the church a little bit more gathering space, for people coming in or out of services. So we built these platforms over the existing stairs.”
In addition to those platforms along the walls at opposite ends of the space, they also designed plinths that helped direct people around the columns and to the doors of the vestibule. All of these new constructions were added atop the existing stairs.
“The existing stairs were not compliant by today's standards,” Thiel explains. “If we cut into them, we would have to make them compliant. And right out those doors is Wisconsin Avenue, so we don't have a lot of room to work with.
“We did not want to modify the existing structure at all, so we built these platforms over the top. They'll be an extension of the main floor and they just give a little bit more square footage for people to step aside, congregate, talk.”
Just inside the sanctuary at the back, wooden frames are being constructed for the baptismal font and immersion pool, which will be clad in marble and for a whopping 8-foot-tall ambry, which is a cabinet used to store vessels containing holy oils.
“In most Catholic churches, it's a very small cabinet, maybe a foot by foot and a half by two feet tall,” Thiel says. “Sometimes they're just mounted on the wall. For a church of this size and scale and this design, we needed something bigger, more prominent.”
The woodwork for these two features, along with some woodwork on the altar, is being done by Milwaukee’s family-owned Inspired Artisans, founded by Gianfranco Tassara and operated with his son Gino.
At the end of the tour, Burrie offered me a chance to climb the church tower, which was not part of my visit when I wrote an earlier Urban Spelunking story on Gesu, so I jumped at the chance.
From outside the choir loft we climbed steel stairs running up to a scuttle hatch in the ceiling high above the staircase connecting the narthex and choirloft.
Once through the hatch, we were in a soaring space with two extremely tall pointed Gothic windows on each wall and a staircase running along three sides up to another hatch.
Up the stairs and through that opening, we were in a similarly large space – this time with a trio of shorter pointed windows in each wall.
Along the way we spied some graffiti dating back to at least 1913 and perhaps earlier.
Up yet another three-section staircase (at least these had handrails and weren’t too steep) and we were in the belfry with the two bells, one large and one a bit smaller. Fortunately we made our climb when the bells were not due to ring.
Next, we climbed an old wooden ladder that was leaning against a perhaps even older wooden ladder that was nailed to the wall.
Through that hatch we were confronted by the backs of the clock faces, which are perhaps about five or six feet tall. In the center of the space is a sort of wooden shed that holds that clockworks.
While the old mechanical clock mechanism is still in the center of the room, the much smaller modern automation system, which looks a bit like a thermostat, is attached to the wall.
Climbing one more old wooden ladder attached to the wall (really a continuation of the previous level's ladder) we get another level above to where the tower’s highest windows are located.
It’s possible to climb another ladder all though the peak of the spire but we opted not to do that, since there are no views.
As we make our way back down Burrie tells me he strapped on a GoPro a few months ago and made a video of the tower climb, so that you can feel like you were part of it. See it here...
And if you want to be a part of the renovation of the historic Gesu Church, designed by the architect of many Milwaukee monuments (City Hall, The Pfister Hotel, Turner Hall, Golda Meir School, etc. etc.), visit the renovation website, where there’s more information and a link to make a donation.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
