6400 Minnesota Avenue
St. Louis (Carondelet), Missouri 63111  
www.csjsl.org

Sent from Lyons, France by Mother St. John Fontbonne, head of the Sisters of St. Joseph, six nuns arrived in Missouri in 1836. They settled on property near the parish church of Carondelet, a town independent of St. Louis from its founding in 1767 by Pierre Delor until its annexation in 1870. They began construction of the present north wing in 1840, and other wings followed in 1865, 1883, 1885, and 1891, enclosing a three-story cloister. From here the sisters founded the present St. Joseph Institute for the Deaf in Chesterfield, Fontbonne University in Clayton, and St. Joseph’s Academy in Frontenac. This convent became the motherhouse for the Sisters of St. Joseph in the United States in 1860 and established numerous convents around the nation.

The Holy Family Chapel, the most recent building in the motherhouse complex, was begun in 1897 and dedicated two years later. Aloysius Gillick of Gillick Brothers Construction Company designed the chapel in a conservative Lombard Romanesque style that had been in use for fifty years by then. The interior was originally lighted by clear glass windows, except for the two roundels, the four evangelists near the high altar, and the unusual semi-domes above the smaller apses (absidioles) at the ends of the aisles. A third alcove in the right aisle shelters a statue of Our Lady of La Salette, made in Lyon and brought from the 1865 chapel.

Stained glass added in 1935 by the Wallis Company darkened the chapel, but the sophisticated lighting system installed in 2001 as part of a comprehensive renovation has brightened it remarkably. The restored original colors and white statues and altars add to the feeling of lightness. Joseph Sibble of New York created much of the sculpture, including the stations of the cross incorporated into the balcony fronts. His touching group of the Holy Family surmounts the high altar made by Schrader and Conradi of St. Louis. St. Joseph also appears in the right absidiole, in the large painting above (a 1901 copy of Raphael’s Marriage of the Virgin), and in a relief above the 1865 altar in the south transept showing his death. The Martyrs’ Altar in the north transept is wooden, carved by Joseph Littenecher in 1881. The entire bodies of six Early Christian martyrs, obtained in Rome in 1861 and 1878, are displayed here, including Saints Nerusia Euticia, Berenice, Berisimus, Discolius, Vincent and Aurelius, some with original inscription stones. (See photo below of the original grave marker of St. Discolius; the drawing of a dove was often inscribed on grave stones as a symbol of peace, love, and the Holy Spirit.) Niches in the altar contain bones of seventy other martyrs, and still others are housed elsewhere in the convent. The vestibule chapel displays a bronze bell sent by Mother Fontbonne in 1838. The lobby beyond displays the convent’s distinctive floors alternating maple and black walnut. Below the stairs is a sculptural relief made by Rudy Torrini in 2001 to commemorate the origins of the order in St. Louis.
November 11, 2007 marked the first visit by the Chamber Chorus to the Sisters of St. Joseph Motherhouse and the Holy Family Chapel.

Notes by Esley Hamilton and Philip Barnes
Photos by Roger Hill