Religion: Two-Level Church

Detroit Catholics went to marvel at the dedication of a church architecturally unique in the land last week, the new French Romanesque St. Aloysius on downtown Detroit’s famed Washington Boulevard (“most brilliantly lighted street in the world”). Unique feature: the seating arrangement. Old St. Aloysius, built in 1861,* torn down last spring, seated only 728 worshipers. On the same site, new St. Aloysius accommodates 2,000.

Architect Walter Meier was in a quandary when he went to work. The ground-site, cramped between two high buildings, was fixed at 72 ft. x 100 ft. A tall church was not wanted. But it was imperative that the seating capacity be more than doubled.

He at first planned two units: a basement church with separate altar; a nave proper on the street level with a high altar surrounded by balconies. But the church fathers objected. The balconies would make the church too much like a cinema palace. The scheme was abandoned. Last week those at the dedication viewed and approved Architect Meier’s final effort.

What was to have been the lower, isolated, basement church forms the ground floor of the main church. What was to have been the main floor has a great semicircular well cut into it around the high altar which rests on the basement floor and rises through the well. Thus the sanctuary is made visible to worshipers on both upper and lower levels and to those in the single balcony which extends around three sides of the upper level.

Around the sanctuary well is a narrow passageway between curved railings, the railing nearest the congregation serving as a communion table. Communion on the lower level is given at the altar rail below the high altar.On the lower level in crypts underneath Washington Boulevard’s sidewalks and in niches are two side altars in marble, a complete set of Stations of the Cross, four shrines, four confessionals. Concealed organ loft and choir stalls are at balcony level on either side of the sanctuary. In the ceiling are an echo organ, a swell organ. Acoustics, at first feared, were last week pronounced perfect.

*Built as a Presbyterian church, St. Aloysius was sold to the Catholic diocese in 1873 for $25,000.