BENEDICTINE ARCHITECT

 

I think many years ago, I did a Blog on the work of my great grandfather, who was a well- known architect and builder (he did the first “skyscraper” under Louis Sullivan) in St. Louis.  My father studied architecture in college and though he never set up a practice in Los Angeles, he designed houses for family and friends. My elder brother was very successful in the building trade, and like my father, very artistic. Because it is in my blood, I am always interested in good building and found this Benedictine monk, who designed Churches in the East, about the same time my great grandfather was working. The use of brick and stone were among similarities in their work.

FATHER MICHAEL  McINERNEY, O.S.B. was born in 1877 in Pennsylvania of Irish immigrants. His father was a stone contractor and at age 15 he was accepted as an apprentice to work under the architect W.A. Thomas of Pittsburgh.  Augmenting his training with studies at Duquesne University, the he quickly advanced and soon became a partner in the firm.   

(My great grandfather  who had immigrated from Germany at 17, owned the business by age 27 that he started to work in). Michael got his start as a teenager working as an assistant to his father and obviously had a love of stone.

 In the Holy Year 1900 Michael enrolled at Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina, intending to receive a  liberal arts education.  Soon after he arrived a fire ravaged through Robert Lee Stowe Hall built in 1898.  That fire of May 19, 1900 proved to be a turning point in his life and the life of the Abbey and College.  Michael volunteered his services to help with the interior reconstruction of the gutted building.  That was the beginning of his long career as architect of Catholic institutional buildings locally and beyond.

As with so many in religious life, we have plans and then God intervenes, calling us. Michael entered the monastery in 1902 and professed monastic vows in 1903.  He was ordained priest in 1907.  His designs were primarily for Catholic institutions that included approximately 200 churches, 27 hospitals, 18 convents or monasteries, 10 gymnasiums, and other projects as well.  His works were influenced and particularized by his love for monastic architecture.  He became known as "Father Michael of Belmont Abbey."

(Right: St. Michael's  Church in Gastonia, NC)

Trained in the medieval-revivalist style of his time, he brought to life churches and convents and church properties rich in architectural theology.  Father McInerney developed his own style that became known as "American Benedictine."  This was a red brick variation of the German Gothic Revival, named thus for its frequent use by monasteries. 

 Interior ornamentation was simple and austere.  Exterior ornamentation was intrinsic rather than appended as an afterthought.  His signature was a long-stemmed cross  that is customarily seen in many of his building exteriors; sometimes in bold relief while other times more subtly inscribed in the brickwork design.

(Left: Portico- Belmont Abbey)
His works are remembered for their imposing beauty and simplicity.  His first full creation, St. Leo Hall,  was designed by him as a seminarian and built in 1907.  The accomplishment won for him significant acclaim. The design he pioneered had a box shape that gains special distinction from its Gothic windows and the projection of the roof. 

The texturing of the brick and the shapes and sizes of the windows create a Benedictine feel.  This work as well as his other creations on the campus of his Alma Mater, Belmont College, helped establish the young monk-architect as a leading religious architect in Catholic circles.  

 Because of the poverty and minority of Catholics in the South, his works in the Carolinas centered on small chapels, but by the 1920's he had a national clientele and most of his large projects were out of state, including Maryland and West Virginia. 

Over time Father McInerney's style of design evolved, emphasized by a shift from brick to stone, from Gothic Revival to a striking conception of the Romanesque imposed on classically simple facades, to his own abbreviation of the the Art Deco, with a new economy of exterior line with a taste for flat roofs and squared towers, emphasizing the box form.  These later buildings had strikingly unornamented interiors whose art and expression proceeded from the structural design.  

The modest income he earned helped keep his Abbey solvent during the Great Depression.  As an artist he also designed altars, candlesticks, chalices, vestments, candelabra, sanctuary lamps, pews, and even grave markers.  As an artist he contributed many articles on the subject of church and institutional architecture, stained glass, and other related topics.  He served on the faculty of Belmont Abbey College and during the summer months he was an adjunct professor at St. Louis University in Missouri. (Did he come across my great grandfather?)

                     (Right: Sacred Heart Convent & Church)

According to local historian Father Pascal Baumstein, OSB:

"The Stained Glass Association of America and the North Carolina Chapter of the American Institute of Architects granted him honorary memberships. In 1959, St. Vincent College of Pennsylvania awarded McInerney its doctorate (honoris causa) in recognition of his more than five hundred buildings, his 'devotion to ecclesiastical art, the sacrifices and labors of the priest and monk, and the economy of church funds [secured through] the endeavors of his artistic and architectural talents.' He is interred in the monastic cemetery at Belmont Abbey."