I was digging around in the vault and I stumbled upon these just ok photos of the interior of St. Cecilia’s Roman Catholic Church from probably just over a decade ago. They were giving tours during Lent and their famous fish fries. I’ve looked at the exterior twice, back in April of 2011 and then again in December of 2020. I think these photos are from the first visit.

The church is in the Romanesque Revival style, so appropriately, the walls and ceilings are covered in mosaics, as would be appropriate. Originally, Romanesque churches were noted for their small windows and thick walls, so mosaics were utilized to amplify the light that did come in through the openings that did exist. These mosaics are the work of the Ravenna Mosaic Company, an offshoot of Emil Frei and Associates. Of course, having been built in 1926 and the invention of the lightbulb, there are anachronistic stained glass windows that would not have been present in Romanesque churches (since they decrease light intrusion into interiors).

The mosaics and tabernacle are beautiful, complete with some statues that could very well have come from the Kaletta Statuary Company, just a mile or so to the north.

St. Cecilia herself, or an angel, is shown playing a harp, flanked by two other angels. St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music, is often shown holding a harp or organ, gazing skyward, beholding a heavenly choir, while flanked with two saints on either side. Raphael’s composition of the subject is perhaps the most famous.

I did some research on the architect, H.P. Hess, and was not able to find much; he may have had a residence at 4811 Cote Brilliante Avenue. The contractor, Charles Kloster, built a substantial business for himself beginning in 1922, and his company still exists, though it is no longer in family hands.

Interestingly, the vaults over the nave have been left largely unadorned.

Rather appropriately, there is a large organ in the choir loft.

The stained glass windows are in what might be colloquially called the “Chartres style” in that there are large numbers of relatively small pieces of glass with a dominance of the color blue.

The first parish church, built in 1908, like many others in the city, began as one of the archdiocese’s rural standard church/school combinations (sanctuary upstairs, school rooms downstairs), just as St. Ambrose, St. Hedwig, St. Agatha and St. Engelbert, and those are just the ones I know about.