Just about everyone in St. Louis has heard now that the new pope, Leo XIV, served his novitiate to become an Augustinian here in St. Louis at the now closed St. Henry’s/Immaculate Conception at the intersection of Longfellow Boulevard and Lafayette Avenue.

I’ve looked at the church twice, once back in February of 2011, then again in September of 2021. A reader also provided amazing photographs of the church under construction (the spire on the northeast corner was clearly never completed), and I also took a look at the parish school, now converted into apartments, back in May of 2021.

Anyhow, the current owner, who bought it from the Compton Heights Concert Band, opened its doors last week for curious visitors.

It’s a beautiful church, in what I would call the English Gothic Revival, but a little French, in keeping with its original role as St. Kevin’s, an Irish national church. There are some interesting landscapes depicting towns on the walls of the aisles, but I could not identify their location.

The church is in excellent shape, and you can imagine Robert Prevost, the future pope, walking down the nave.

The stained glass is nice, but is clearly just bought out of a catalog and not the work of a master studio such as Emil Frei and Associates, whose work graces so many churches in the city.

I always get a kick out of the Revival styles in St. Louis; the windows of the clerestory (the highest windows up near the groin vaulting) are ridiculously small, and the gallery of the triforium (right below the clerestory) is blind, meaning it has no depth to it. In a historic Gothic church, the architect would take advantage of flying buttresses to place huge stained glass windows in the clerestory. But the vaulting, which is perhaps more fan than groin vaulting, is very beautiful here and is in a fine state of preservation.

The neighboring rectory, which is directly attached (but not originally so, owing to the presence of a rusticated exterior wall inside the building) is in good condition.

This is where the future Pope would have lived during his time in St. Louis in 1977. It was a time of dramatic transition for the neighborhood.

In fact, it is interesting to see what people say when asked what neighborhood the church is in. Officially, according to the City of St. Louis neighborhoods, this is the Gate District (which I call Compton Hill, its historic name), but many news reports have placed the church in Compton Heights. Its officially recognized City of St. Louis northern boundary is Interstate 44, two hundred or so feet to the south of the church. However, as I mentioned, Longfellow Boulevard passes in front of the church–a major thoroughfare of Compton Heights–and would have connected before the destruction wrought by the interstate, so it perhaps was once in Compton Heights, but now is in the Gate District!