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The oldest known picture of the church shows a round window in the gable over the side door. This was long ago covered by siding but during the demolition process the contractor discovered the original round window frame still in place and hidden behind that siding. After a bit of discussion it was decided that this is one feature of the original building we wanted to be sure to replicate and the new round window has officially arrived!

The bell tower holds lots of different treasures in its multiple layers and the trap door in the ceiling allows for access to the bell and to the tower in case repairs are necessary at any point.

One of our favorite finds in the bell tower is an abundance of the same car siding that is used on our original vaulted ceiling. While we can’t know for sure why the original parishioners chose to install this tongue and groove wood on the ceiling high up in the top of the bell tower, it appears that it was left over when the ceiling of the church was completed and they chose to make creative use of it in the bell tower.

We had a couple of small spots in the ceiling that needed repairs or patches and rather than trying to find new materials and make them match the ceiling, we were able to utilize the tongue and groove boards from the bell tower to serve as fill in materials and patches. A few boards were brought down from the tower, cleaned, and given a promotion to the main part of church.

One of our favorite treasures from the bell tower is this old Alabastine label. This label quite literally floated down from the crawlspace in the bell tower one evening while parishioners were there taking measurements and it set off a bit of a clue-gathering mission to learn more about the product and what it might have been used for. What we’ve learned is that the Alabastine Company was in business from 1879 to about 1948. Alabastine is a wall coating derived from gypsum that was mined from the extensive shale beds that occur abundantly around Grand Rapids, Michigan. Once a color was chosen and purchased, the product was shipped in a block of tinted powder that was then mixed with water to create a paint. Painting walls with tinted Alabastine would be similar to painting with Plaster of Paris and the effect created a durable surface that was easy to maintain. It could even be modeled into relief shapes to form tiles and designs that could then be painted and sealed. And, in a fun twist, the Alabastine Company employed a team of artists that created stencils that could be purchased to create designs on walls. Sound familiar? It should. It now seems likely that our beautifully stenciled border around the original ceiling was created using an Alabastine Company stencil. A quick consultation with the Special Collections Library at Grand Valley State University confirms that the label we found was likely used between 1910 and 1920. This means that when Fr. Hoehn purchased the building in 1910 he likely concluded that a new coat of paint was necessary at that time or within just a few short years. While we’ll likely never know exactly what items were purchased or who made the purchase, we do now know that early parishioners of St. Jude’s decorated our parish home with products from the Alabastine Company.