St. Josaphat’s iconic church steeple nearly lost in storm now stronger than ever

June 09--The view from the scaffolding astride the St. Josaphat Catholic Church steeple displays a smorgasbord of Detroit's east side.

The steeple, with its cross towering 215 feet above Canfield Street, was getting a new slate skin on a recent Friday as roofer Robert Maxwell hammered copper nails into the new shingles, positioning them so water will shed easily off the nearly vertical sides.

When Maxwell, 48, of Detroit, and the other roofers and sheet metal workers from Detroit Cornice and Slate arrived after a November windstorm almost destroyed the steeple, the future of the now 113-year-old piece of Detroit's skyline was in doubt.

"The whole tower was moving back and forth. It was moving at least a foot," Maxwell said, as Marco King, 44, a native of the Dominican Republic living in Hazel Park, prepared shingles for installation.

More than six months after winds topping 70 m.p.h. left cracks across the wooden insides of the steeple, dislodged shingles and shifted the bricks on its base, restoration work is nearing completion.

Kevin Piotrowski, the council president of Mother of Divine Mercy Parish, which includes the churches of St. Josaphat, Sweetest Heart of Mary and St. Joseph, said parish officials hope to have the church reopened in the coming weeks.

High repair costs

Almost $90,000 has been raised through the parish's Save Our Steeple campaign, donations that include cash from passersby to a check from Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, but more money is needed because the repair costs could reach $500,000. Insurance money is expected, but it's unclear how much.

Piotrowski is holding on to faith that the funding will come through.

"When they built this place 113 years ago, they didn't have all the money, but they had faith. We're kind of right back to that," Piotrowski said.

Many of the repairs on the St. Josaphat steeple will never be seen by the public.

Inside, workers added four wooden floors, metal brackets and cables that crisscross the interior like thick cobwebs for stability. Workers also removed a center post and the wooden boards that had been nailed into it resembling giant porcupine quills as well as a layer of pigeon droppings.

Structural engineer Erik Majcher, 34, of Ann Arbor-based Robert Darvas Associates, said the steeple "should easily" withstand wind gusts of 110 m.p.h.

To reach portions of the steeple, workers, including Randy Defaut, 60, and Mike Wilson, 45, both of Fowlerville, scale narrow stairs and ladders and squeeze through openings not much larger than pet doors.

Although he noted that the crew members were struck by the church's elegance, Defaut said the most surprising finding might have been when they realized that the many holes in the copper-covered cross atop the steeple came from bullets, apparently shot from quite a distance.

Ornate interior

The months since the last mass at St. Josaphat on Nov. 17 have been sad times for Piotrowski, who drives to the church from the suburbs like most of the other parishioners. It's the first time in 113 years, the Dearborn resident said, that there were no Christmas or Easter services at the church, which was condemned by the city after the storm.

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The current church building was finished in 1901, but the church was founded 125 years ago because of fighting in the Polish community at the other nearby Catholic churches, Sweetest Heart of Mary and St. Albertus.

The church is named after St. Josaphat Kuntsevych, the archbishop of Polotsk, Poland, in what is now Belarus. Kuntsevych was a church unifier who was martyred in 1623, according to information on the parish website.

On the ornate interior of the Romanesque-style church, which has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1982, painted religious scenes cover the ceiling and parts of the upper walls.

One intriguing image captures a battle scene between Polish and Russian troops in World War I. Scores of small light bulbs adorn the towering high altar, posing a challenge for maintenance workers who must change them when they burn out, Piotrowski said.

St. Josaphat is not the only building in the parish of about 840 families that church officials would like to repair -- one of Sweetest Heart of Heart of Mary's two steeples has a visible twist -- but the dire condition of the St. Josaphat steeple required church officials to take action. After the storms on Nov. 17 and 18, there were concerns the steeple could collapse, and Canfield Street was closed.

But fears of destruction for the iconic steeple passed by countless motorists on I-75 have changed to optimism in the months since.

"It's really been fortified. The steeple isn't going anywhere for another 113 years," Piotrowski said. "It's far stronger than it was when it was built."

Contact Eric D. Lawrence: [email protected]

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