St. Francis de Sales Cathedral stained-glass windows restored for another century

St. Francis de Sales Cathedral’s stained-glass windows are being rebuilt piece by piece to keep one of Baker City’s most visible landmarks intact for another century. At the corner of First and Church streets, the restoration is already beyond simple maintenance: it is a phased preservation effort aimed at protecting the cathedral’s historic face downtown.

Andrew Gaona, a stained-glass project manager for Daprato Rigali Studios of Chicago, helped oversee the return of the first repaired windows after months of work. He held a fragment from one of the original 1923 windows to show the problem that sent the glass east for repair: cracks in the lead that holds the glass together. The cathedral has 14 stained-glass windows in all, with eight installed in 1923, four added in 1959 and two installed in 1965.

Church maintenance committee members Steve Bogart, Les Penning, John Fuzi and Tom Fisk made the windows a priority, and Mike Rigali graded each one’s condition. Several received an F, putting them near the top of the repair list. Last fall, workers removed two north-wall windows, The Sacred Heart of Jesus and St. Francis de Sales, along with 14 smaller panels from the bottoms of six windows, and trucked them to Chicago for restoration.

The process is painstaking. The Rigali team photographs and rubs the glass, soaks it to loosen the lead, cleans it, repaints or replaces pieces when needed, then rebuilds the window before reinstalling it. Leo Gaona, the lead foreman and Andrew Gaona’s father, said one cause of deterioration was a lack of ventilation between the stained glass and its protective cover. While those windows were being handled, the team also began removing The Assumption and Crucifixion windows for the next round of work.

Phase one of the project cost about $168,000 to $168,600 and was part of a five-year restoration plan. The first repaired windows were originally targeted to be back in place by the end of January, and phase one is now complete. Another $200,000 is still needed for phase two, making the effort as much a fundraising challenge as a preservation project.

The cathedral itself was completed and dedicated in 1908, four years before the Diocese of Baker was established in 1903. The cathedral and its rectory are contributing properties in the Baker Historic District, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Diocese materials say St. Francis de Sales serves as the mother church for a territory that stretches across 66,800 square miles east of the Cascades, a reminder that the glass in Baker City carries meaning far beyond one parish block.