ST. IGNATIUS LOYOLA (1924)

Denver's first Jesuit parish, Sacred Heart, filled rapidly after its creation in 1879. To relieve crowding, Edward Barry, SJ, the pastor of Sacred Heart and an amateur architect, designed and constructed an $8,000 chapel at 2536 Ogden Street. It opened on Epiphany Sunday, January 6, 1910, as Loyola Chapel.

This little, double-gabled chapel soon overflowed with Sunday worshippers, leading Father Barry to propose building a much larger and grander church. This dream remained a dream until Charles A. McDonnell, SJ, became pastor of Sacred Heart and of Loyola Chapel in 1921. Finding crowds waiting outside to squeeze into the chapel, Father McDonnell plunged into a building campaign. He sold the chapel and purchased a prime block of land on the west side of City Park Golf Course.

The basement chapel of St. Ignatius Loyola Church was completed and opened for Masses on October 1, 1923. A year later, on October 12, Bishop Tihen dedicated the church. Denver architects Frederick Mountjoy and Frank Frewen created the 192-foot-long and seventy-five-foot-wide perpendicular Gothic red brick structure with stone trim and red tile roof. Overhead, twin bell towers soared 110 feet skyward. Under the high domed ceiling, St. Ignatius seated 1,200. Carrara marble, exquisite stained glass, onyx and gold furnishings, and a new-fangled Celotex ceiling graced the columnless interior, which excelled accoustically and was bathed in morning and evening sunlight streaming through the immense front and rear windows.

Paying for this expensive church and coping with the Great Depression forced postponment of school building until 1938, when the basement was partitioned into four classrooms. The Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati commuted daily from Sacred Heart parish until 1943, when the Peter M. Peltier house at 2244 Vine Street was purchased and remodeled as a convent.

As the school overflowed with students, both sacristies of the church were converted to classrooms. By 1950, the enrollment had reached 292, and the parish undertook a $270,000 brick school, built in two stages between 1950 and 1954. By 1955, the school had 356 pupils taught by eight Sisters of Charity.

As the City Park neighborhood attracted black and Hispanic families, pastor Edward P. Murphy, SJ (1950-1970), welcomed them. During the 1970s and 1980s, Jesuit pastors Thomas J. Kelly, John Waters, James McMullen, and Donald Cunningham, assisted by associates and in-residence Jesuits including John F. Brady, Michael Delaney, Walter Harris, Vince Hovely, Tom Jost, and James C. Sunderland, made Loyola a model integrated parish. Small classes offering individual attention attracted many aspiring minority students who emerged as the majority in Loyola School by the 1970s. Sister Mary Ellen Roach, SC, the principal, and dedicated women such as sisters Sue Verbiscus, Janet Wehmhoff, and Jean Marie Amolsch, who served simultaneously as teacher, secretary, first aid specialist, bookstore manager, milk seller, bellringer, and after-school traffic coordinator, have kept Loyola open while other, better-financed parochial schools closed.

This monumental church built by a largely Irish and Italian flock in then thriving Northeast Denver is now a struggling core city parish. Although it never has found money to complete installation of its beautiful organ and stained glass windows, St. Ignatius has concentrated on a more important priority--providing a school and spiritual guidance in an integrated urban neighborhood.