In the late 1990’s when I was pastor of The Church of the Most Holy Trinity in downtown Augusta, Georgia (1991-2004), we completely restored the interior of the church using Conrad Schmitt and Company.
We also removed and completely restored the three oldest stained glass windows in the church, the ones above the altar, which were in place when the church was consecrated in April of 1863, while the Civil War was still being waged!
The side windows by Mayer and Company from Munich Germany, were not installed until about 1917 or so, during the height of World War I!
The three oldest stained glass windows above the altar are from another company, and many believe these are Tiffany windows. These three are of a different style than the Mayer windows, but spectacular in their own right too.
Recently, the Mayer windows were removed to be completely restored and are now installed again. These are huge Mayer windows and spectacular in brilliance and of the typical style of Mayer stained glass windows.
You can watch the facebook video of their re-installation by way of a slide show HERE! IT IS WELL WORTH WATCHING.
The slide show is accompanied by the church’s historic Jardine Pipe organ, also restored in my time as pastor there. It dates back to 1863 but because of the northern blockade of the south, it sat on a dock in New York until the war was concluded. It was shipped to the church in 1866 and installed then.
5 comments:
I bet Holy Trinity was just as blindingly bright inside after the windows were removed as was the case when the same was done at the cathedral in 1998. They had to use THREE layers of paper to reduce the brilliance to a tolerable level.
Those old-time German Catholics knew how to give glory to God and they were not rich and affluent. Most Holy Trinity is lucky the wreckovators didn't have their way with it.
When I was there as pastor I asked a long-time parishioner how it was that little was changed. She said, "We were always too poor to do anything!"
We were in the dark on the west side of Most Holy Trinity as painted plywood panels filled in the gaps when the windows were sent off for restoration. The east side stained glass windows are slated for removal and restoration after Epiphany 2026.
Most Holy Trinity (f.k.a. St. Patrick’s) might have been poor monetarily, but definitely not spiritually or liturgically. MHT definitely was not spared from wreckovations or attempted wreckovations. The main altar was brutally separated from the beautiful reredos after Vatican II and pulled forward. A classic pulpit was removed. Lovely antique, oil-painted Stations of the Cross were supposedly sent off for restoration and never returned. In the early 1990s there was talk that the pastor wanted to remove the marble altar rail and the statuary from the church. Thanks be to God that this was not done. An interesting aside, in the early 1990s when another Augusta Catholic church building was wreckovated under the auspices of a well known Catholic priest who specializes in the destruction of faithful traditional church architecture. He was supposedly asked how MHT could be “improved”. His reply was rumored to be that it was a hopeless case and that the best option was to tear it down and start all over again.
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