ST. VINCENT DE PAUL (1926)

During the 1920s, James J. Donnelly took a census of his South Denver parish, St. Francis de Sales. He found quite a few Catholics living east of Downing Street and south of Virgina Avenue were fulfilling their Sunday obligation at the chapel of St. Thomas Seminary.

Furthermore, Aksel Nielsen, George Olinger, Lawrence Phipps, and other wealthy developers were eyeing the area for extensive, expensive new residential developments around Senator Phipps' country home, Belcaro. Bishop Tihen concurred with Father Donnelly that the area was ripe for a new parish but added the clarification that its purpose was "not to improve real estate, or to develop a certain section of the city, but to preach the gospel to every creature."

In honor of the Vincentian fathers who had accommodated area residents in their chapel at St. Thomas Seminary, the new parish was formed in March 1926 as St. Vincent de Paul. Bishop Tihen named Francis W. Walsh the first pastor. Father Walsh, a New Yorker come West for reasons of health, taught political science at Loretto Heights College. Working with a list of 175 potential parishioners, he raised money to purchase a sixteen-lot site at the northeast corner of East Arizona Avenue and South Josephine Street. This was in the Electric Heights subdivision, one of the first to be developed in the Belcaro area.

Ground was broken in May 1926 for a $50,000 church-hall/school building, designed in the collegiate Gothic style by Thomas MacLaran, a prominent Colorado Springs architect. Bishop Tihen officially dedicated the pressed blond brick edifice on November 14, 1926. The following autumn, the Sisters of Loretto from St. Mary's Academy opened St. Vincent's grade school on the second floor. The first floor was partitioned to provide a church and living quarters for the pastor, while the basement served as a school auditorium and parish hall. The burgeoning parish population led to the conversion of the entire basement to a larger church.

St. Vincent's, according to the Denver Catholic Register, was known as "the radio church" after Masses of the erudite, mellifluous Father Walsh were selected for transmission on radio station KFEL. By 1932, when Father Walsh returned to his native New York City and was replaced by Manus Boyle, the basement church was jammed at Sunday Masses. Father Boyle, a jolly native of County Donegal, Ireland, soon became a regular of the parish Pinochle Club. These Wednesday night pinochle players also served as the parish development committee and put part of their pinochle pot into building a $16,500 rectory for Father Boyle in 1940.

Parish pinochle players purchased nineteen additional lots on the north side of Arizona Avenue between Josephine Street and University Boulevard for a new church. They also bought ten acres of land between Colorado Boulevard and Birch Street along Arizona Avenue. "The land had originally been intended as the site for a hospital to build up old bodies," as Father Boyle put it in 1947 when athletic fields were installed there, "but will now be used to build up young bodies." This $11,000 investment proved to be a real estate gold mine. When Southeast Denver began to boom after World War II, it was sold to launch a $650,000 building campaign.

Work began on the new church in 1951. Architect John K. Monroe designed the buff brick structure in the Norman Gottswald style, with a slender spire. Archbishop Vehr dedicated the 725-seat house of God on February 5, 1953. The elegantly understated neo-Gothic exterior sheltered an interior rich in dark wood and travertine marble, reminiscent of both the Californian mission and English Gothic styles. The Santa Fe Studios of Church Art created the stained glass windows, stations of the cross, and other furnishings.

Over the main entrance, a large statue of St. Vincent de Paul was donated by long-time parishioner Carl Dire. Dire, who opened the nearby Bonnie Brae Tavern in 1934, gave the statue after his sons returned safely from Marine Corps action in Korea. The sons now operate the tavern, a pizza lover's heaven and favorite place to go after bingo or to celebrate baptisms and weddings.

A new rectory was also built, allowing the old building to be converted, in 1951, to a convent for the Sisters of Loretto, whom the pastor had been daily chauffeuring from St. Mary's Academy. Upon Father Boyle's death in 1951, Eugene A. O'Sullivan became the third pastor of St. Vincent's.

Father O'Sullivan took a special interest in the school, whose eight grades hummed with as many as 700 pupils during the 1960s. Parishioner Betsy (Buchanan) Stapp, one of those students, recalled later that "at that time fashion dictated the wearing of so many petticoats that all the girls had difficulty fitting into a classroom at one time." To solve this problem, Father O'Sullivan started use of school uniforms and also did away with the minimum tuition requirement, two measures that made it easier for poorer children to attend one of the best parochial schools in the archdiocese.

Father O'Sullivan retired as a monsignor in 1969, to be followed as pastor by Francis J. Syrianey (1969-1979) and the current pastor, Melvin F. Thompson. Father Thompson presided over the remodeling of the church basement in 1984, when the new parish hall was renamed The Bishop George R. Evans Center, after a most illustrious St. Vincent's graduate.

With 845 parish families and over 400 students, St. Vincent's church and school are alive and well, Father Thompson reported in 1988. "It is our hope the parish family will continue to grow in love of God and neighbor in the future, always remembering its precious heritage."