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The parish of St. Cecilia was founded in 1906 to serve an area where populations from the old rival French towns of St. Louis (founded 1764) and Carondelet (founded 1767) were beginning to converge. The ground is part of the old Carondelet Commons, which can still be traced in the streets bounded by Meramec on the north and Morganford on the west which run at an oblique angle to the surrounding streets. The state names of the north-south streets are carried down from St. Louis Commons, but the east-west streets follow the 1832 plan of Carondelet. After World War I, bungalows and two-family flats rapidly filled the remaining vacant lots of this neighborhood, and in 1926, the cornerstone for the present church was laid.
The architect was Henry P. Hess (1884-1957), whose career was devoted primarily to Catholic schools and churches. Born to a family of builders, Hess trained in a series of St. Louis architectural offices. After three years with the respected school designer William B. Ittner, he started his own firm about 1916, just in time to participate in Archbishop Glennon’s extensive program of parochial school construction. Among Hess’s better known school designs are Rosati-Kain on Lindell next to the Cathedral Basilica, the Tudor-Revival Christian Brothers College on Clayton Road, and the Neoclassical McBride High (now King Junior High) on North Kingshighway. Perhaps his finest work was the present Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in Shrewsbury, whose 1931 tower is a landmark on Watson Road.
For St. Cecilia, Hess took his design cues for the Romanesque exterior and twin towers from St. Anthony’s Church, which can be seen looking northeast from here. The Munich immigrant Emil Frei was responsible at St. Cecilia’s for both the windows and the mosaics. His firms, Emil Frei Art Glass Company and Ravenna Mosaic, Inc., worked out of the same building on South Grand at that time. The eclectic interior has ribbed vaults in the nave and cross vaults in the aisles; Byzantine capitals top the green scagliola columns and respond as consoles in the aisles. The unusual painted interlace patterns on the spandrels above the arcades center on symbols of the apostles. The detailed nave windows illustrate scenes from the life of the Virgin and the childhood of Jesus; note the rainbow in the last window on the right. The transept windows are exceptional. On the south the participants in the Creation gather for a group portrait, surmounted by the classes of the heavenly host - angels, archangels, powers, virtues, dominations, thrones, seraphim and cherubim - while on the north the Crucifixion is topped by angels holding instruments of the Passion. The side chapels are dedicated to Sts. Mary and Joseph, while St. Anthony of Padua stands in the south transept. The mosaic-encrusted sanctuary (Protestants would say the chancel) shows Abraham twice: in the sacrifice of Isaac on the south wall and with the priest Melchizedek on the north. The apse depicts the legendary St. Cecilia, patron saint of music, holding her pipe organ and venerated by two angels, and she appears a second time in the statue over the front door. The Chamber Chorus performed An Irish Christmas at St. Cecilia’s on December 20, 1999, some of whose repertoire is included in the Chorus's second compact disc, Vox Pop.
Notes by Esley Hamilton and Philip Barnes