Since the days when trolley cars and horses competed for Salt Lake City’s streets, the stained-glass windows of the First United Methodist Church have helped turn the minds of world-weary worshippers to the miracles of Jesus.
That soon could change.
“We’ve been told that sooner or later,” the church’s trustee chair, Mike Green, explained, “they’re going to collapse.”
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Cracked glass across the face of Jesus in one of the chapel's 31 stained-glass windows.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Yet another crack across the face of Jesus, this time in a window portraying him as a baby in the arms of his mother, Mary.
How soon is hard to tell, but Green has taken it as ominous that one of them has a glass piece that flaps like a flag when the wind whips up.
Repair costs will run the church $125,000, which wouldn’t have been nearly as troublesome if the building’s boiler and elevator hadn’t called it quits earlier this year.
As it is, the congregation has raised $55,000 with some help from donors — enough to get the restoration project underway. To raise the remaining $70,000, Green is turning to the wider community with the hope that, this holiday season, others will agree that the nearly 120-year-old works of art are worth saving.
About the windows
The Victorian Eclectic building, recognizable for its looming bell tower and modified mansard roof, features 31 stained-glass windows, all original to the 1906 construction.
How to help
Those interested in donating can visit https://www.fumcslc.org, click on “give” in the upper right-hand corner, and select “trustees” in the drop-down menu on the following page.
Of those, five stand out for their size. Together, these pieces, between 5 to 20 feet tall, portray an intimate, less-triumphalist Christian story — an image of the empty tomb, Mary and baby Jesus, Jesus as the good shepherd, another of him praying at Gethsemane, and one of him knocking at a door.
There are no official records of their maintenance and restoration through the years, but many carry the scars of previous repairs.
Then, in February, someone — no one knows who — threw a rock through the one of Jesus knocking, leaving a hole a little larger than an apple.
“Restoring the windows had been on the bucket list for a while,” Green said, “but that really got the ball rolling.”
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Green holds a rock thrown through one of the church's stained-glass windows on Ash Wednesday of 2024.
About the building
Formed soon after the completion of the railroad in 1869, the congregation spent its early days shuffling through an assortment of sites, including in an unfinished hayloft, before erecting its first church, completed in 1875, at 33 E. 300 South.
By the turn of the century, however, the thriving community no longer fit in that building. Determined to make their mark on the city’s skyline, the Methodist faithful hired prominent Utah architect Frederick Albert Hale, creator of the Alta Club a few blocks north, to design the church at the corner of 200 East and 200 South.
Besides the windows, the building’s pipe organ, one of Utah’s oldest, represents the church’s crown jewel. The instrument was the subject of its own fundraising campaign, starting in 2009, that led to it being restored using parts of an organ then found in Salt Lake City’s Masonic Temple.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The church's organ, restored and refurbished in 2009, is also original to the nearly 120-year-old building.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The organ was repaired using portions of a second instrument, dated to the same time period, then found at Salt Lake City's Masonic Temple.
For Green, maintaining the church, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is about more than ensuring an inspiring place for Salt Lake City’s Methodists to worship on Sundays.
Rather, he hopes to preserve the sanctuary’s “serenity and peace” for all who use it — from the city’s unsheltered, who gather weekly (at least when the boiler is working) for movie nights, to the outside groups that regularly hold concerts and recitals there.
“It’s really,” he said, “about preserving these unique works of art for generations to come.”
