Future of the past : Tontitown hopes to restore sanctuary by renting to museum
Posted on Monday, July 28, 2008
It stands on the corner of Henri De Tonti Boulevard and Cortiana Street as a reminder of Tontitown's heritage.
The old St. Joseph's Catholic Church sanctuary is constructed mostly of handmade bricks, built on the backs of the Italian families that first came to Northwest Arkansas. It was a place of baptisms, first communions and weddings for the tight-knit community and a place for the city to celebrate its annual harvest of grapes.
Now it sits empty, no masses or services. The doors only opens once a year for the Grape Festival's book sale, and Father James Mancini hopes to change that.
Mancini said the building is old and falling apart with creaky, shaky floors, a leaking roof and a condemned balcony. He said the church has no money to restore it, so he's petitioning the new bishop of the diocese of Little Rock - Anthony B. Taylor - to allow the church to rent the building to the Tontitown Museum.
"We're going to make a fresh appeal (to the diocese of Little Rock )," he said.
Mancini said the church petitioned in the past, about two years ago, to the previous bishop, J. Peter Sartain, and it was denied. He hopes that Taylor will see the situation differently than Sartain.
The church was formed in Tontitown in 1899, but the first building was destroyed by a tornado in 1934. Mancini said the community banded together and hired an architect to design a new building in 1938.
"The only hired person for it was the architect. All the carpentry and labor was donated by the parishioners," Mancini said. "There's something about the styling that is so unique."
The building then served as the Catholic Church's branch in Tontitown for 58 years before a new building was put up in 1994. After that, it started serving as a storage facility and shopping center for the city's Grape Festival book sale. It's currently on the National Registry of Historic Places.
Mancini said the building would need hundreds of thousands of dollars in renovations, and the museum would need to apply for grants to restore the building.
Bev Cortiana, museum director, said she's just waiting to see what the new bishop says before applying for grants.
"It's the perfect place (to move the museum ). There's so much history in that building for all of our families," Cortiana said of the church.
Charlotte Piazza, the Tontitown museum curator, said the museum would love to rent the city landmark and move a bulk of the museum's collections to the larger space. She said the organization now has displays on hold because the current location - the historic Bastianelli house - has no extra space.
Mancini said he will travel to Little Rock in the fall to make a presentation for a new building to replace the church's old school, and he will also be asking the bishop for permission to rent the former sanctuary.
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