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.
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."
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.
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?)
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."
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