Hampton Roads’ only Catholic basilica reopens after years of renovations

Norfolk — St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception is a Norfolk icon.

The white spire of the church bursts forth from the south end of the St. Paul’s neighborhood. Flanked by public housing, the building is from an era when steeples dominated the Norfolk skyline rather than towering office buildings and hotels. That white spire is flanked by smaller Gothic spires lining both sides of the roof, making the Catholic church stand out among the area’s many Protestant houses of worship.

Step inside the huge red doors today, out of the cold and away from the sound of cars zooming down the highway off-ramp a hundred or so feet away, and you’ll find yourself in a cavernous, awe-inspiring architectural feat that evokes the biblical dome of the heavens.

But for years, those Gothic spires outside have been surrounded with scaffolding. And big swaths of that glorious vaulted ceiling were being removed and replaced.

What was supposed to be a quick fix snowballed to epic proportions. Issue after issue led work crews to spend the better part of the past four years repairing St. Mary’s. Much of the church’s roof and upper structure has effectively been rebuilt, while the interior was almost completely gutted and revamped.

This month, ecstatic worshipers returned to the basilica after a long absence. Masses in the adjoining hall weren’t the same, they said.

And this week, members will get to experience the traditional Christmas Eve midnight Mass in the full glory of the 162-year-old church.

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It all started, as these things often do, with a leaky roof.

Luther Adams Jr. is the church’s sextant, the minder of the building and the first one to open things up each morning. He’s been attending St. Mary’s for more than 30 years and knows the building inside and out. It’s a building with a lot of history.

St. Mary’s is one of only two basilicas in Virginia — significant Catholic churches specially designated by the pope himself — and the only African-American one in the United States. It was the state’s only basilica until another St. Mary’s (in Alexandria) was named one a few years ago.

The congregation of Norfolk’s St. Mary’s dates to the 18th century. The current building was built in 1858 after the previous one burned. It took two years to rebuild the church then, on the eve of the Civil War.

Since, the church has stood stoically as Norfolk grew up around it. The congregation inside shifted and changed — the flock of one church merging with the existing worshipers — but the building stood strong.

Several years back, Adams looked around and decided things needed a bit of sprucing up. A fresh coat of paint would help.

But the walls were constantly damp from a chronically leaky roof, too wet to hold paint.

“The building was crying,” Adams said.

Father Jim Curran, the priest at St. Mary’s since 2012, said they closed the church when a chunk of concrete dropped from the ceiling a few feet from where the youth choir was practicing. The last Mass in the chapel was June 4, 2017.

What started as a seemingly simple fix for a leaky roof “turned into a mushroom cloud,” Adams said.

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Once workers got up into the roof, the cracks started to show. The rafters and support beams, all wood, were water damaged and eaten through by termites.

Will McCadden is both a parishioner and the restoration’s project manager.

First it looked like it was about 50% eaten through, he said. Then, upon further examination, it was closer to 80%. Something approaching a miracle had stopped it falling in on itself.

“It was the wings of angels that held it up,” Curran said.

Every time they peeled something back to try to fix one problem, they’d find another.

“Literally every day, something new would show up,” McCadden said.

So the repairs stretched on and on, the end date pushed back over and over.

Basically every part of the soaring arched roof was taken down and rebuilt in sections, McCadden said, including several 25-foot-timbers that sit on huge brick columns and support the roof.

The towering stained glass windows were all fully restored. Termites had ripped through the frame around one right above the altar, McCadden said, and it nearly fell in.

Along the way, they also fixed a grand old pipe organ that had sat silent for decades.

And as the problems mounted and the scope expanded, so did the cost. The initial budget was expected to be $120,000. When all is said and done — redoing effectively everything from floors to stained glass windows to the vaulting ceiling — it’ll run about $6.7 million.

As much as the renovation preserved, it also allowed them to add some modern day amenities. The balcony, for instance, now has air conditioning for the first time ever. They were able to increase the seating capacity, from around 380 to 520.

The work has also returned parts of the church to the way they were before a renovation around 30 years ago.

Adams, the sexton, said he prefers to think of the recent work as a restoration, rather than a renovation, because so much of the new look mirrors how things looked decades ago.

The church again has an aisle down the center of the pews, which it hasn’t since a prior renovation 30 years ago. A historical altar — a huge piece of stonework with a carving of Christ on the cross — was turned away from the congregation decades ago to prevent distraction, Curran said. Now, it’s turned back around to face those assembled in worship.

Many parishioners will see its face for the first time this month.

“A lot of the ‘cradle Catholics,’ they came up with (the church) looking like that,” Adams said, referring to St. Mary’s life-long parishioners, as opposed to converts like himself.

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The restored space, all white and gold vaulting ceilings and sparkling stained glass, enthralls its parishioners.

Michael Pines, a longtime member of the church, said they made do with the converted fellowship hall for services over the past few years.

“We did what we had to do because we had to,” he said. “Everybody I think has been dying to get back in the sanctuary.”

He got choked up standing in the nearly-finished nave, looking around as the sun streamed through the stained glass and dyed the checkerboard floor around him in different shades of red and yellow and blue.

“I can’t even describe it,” Pines said with tears in his eyes.

Irene Elliot came to St. Mary’s in the late 1950′s, when the nearby St. Joseph’s was set to be torn down and the congregations of the churches were merged — leading St. Mary’s to become the largely Black flock it is today.

“It’s like my life. It’s just and extension of my family. I love this church,” she said, delighting in the revamped building.

The most meaningful part of the renovation for the man who leads St. Mary’s congregation?

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Curran said many people who hadn’t been physically coming to church during the pandemic made it to Mass in person specifically because it was in the sanctuary.

“It choked me up to see these faces again. It choked me up to see them weeping,” Curran said.

It’ll be another few weeks until they are totally done. The electrical was still going in last week, plaster work was still wrapping up, and a couple of walls at the back of the church need to be finished for small rooms.

Originally they were going to put in restrooms, but after finding long-forgotten crypts beneath the floor as part of the renovation, “we’re not going to put a commode above someone’s great-grandmother,” Curran said.

A re-dedication ceremony has been postponed until sometime next year, when they can safely have hundreds lining the pews, filling the cavernous church with their prayers and hymns, Curran said.

“When this is all over and we can pack this church again, it’s going to be like the first Mass.”

Ryan Murphy, 757-739-8582, ryan.murphy@pilotonline.com