Staff writer
A month of repair work has led to replaced coverings of century-old stained-glass windows at Valley United Methodist Church in Marion.
The windows are more visible from outside, and better protected from storms and other kinds of damage. They were originally constructed in 1923 at a cost of $50,000 — around $936,900 in today’s money.
Hand-stained and joined by leaded glass connectors, the windows display biblical scenes and objects using beautifully subtle colors.
“The workmanship is so precise,” church director Margaret Wilson said. “There just aren’t artists who do that anymore. It’s too labor-intensive, I suppose.”
In 1982, the church “realized that these windows were irreplaceable,” Wilson said.
The church board decided to reinforce them with Lexan, a kind of protective sheet made of thermoplastic. But over the decades, the sun tinted the clear Lexan a dark yellow. The thermoplastic became semi-opaque, and it was difficult to see the designs from the outside of the church.
Willet Hauser Architectural Glass, a stained glass firm based in Minnesota, stepped in this August. Workers removed the Lexan covering, cleaned the original glass, and repaired small cracks in the windows with epoxy. They then added a new acrylic covering and a metal frame around each window.
“Humidity, different temperatures, they cannot get to this,” Wilson said, gesturing at the acrylic.
The firm also refurbished and painted the wooden frames surrounding the windows.
“They did a great job,” Wilson said of Willet Hauser. “It was time-consuming because they did it right.” The company restored two main sanctuary windows, one large window in a hallway, and seven smaller windows.
Attendance numbers at Valley United have dipped since COVID, Wilson said. She thinks the restoration might inspire more people to come to services each week.
“We have the most beautiful sanctuary in town,” she said.