The Kaletta Statuary Company once dominated the religious sculpture and furnishings business in St. Louis from their shop on a stretch of the 3700 block of California Avenue in Gravois Park.

In fact, if you go into any Roman Catholic church in St. Louis built before the 1950s, you’ll probably see some of their work. Which makes it even more startling how quickly their end came, as Modernism came to architecture in the mid-Twentieth Century churches in the Archdiocese and other denominations. With just a couple of years, the proud company closed forever.