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Arkansas » Delta » Phillips County » Helena–West Helena » St. Mary’s Catholic Church

St. Mary’s Catholic Church

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1934–1936, Charles Eames of Eames and Walsh, 123 Columbia St.
  • (Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, A Division of the Department of Arkansas Heritage, Ralph Wilcox, photographer)

St. Mary’s Catholic Church is the larger of the two churches Eames designed in Arkansas; the other is St. Mary (GE3) in Paragould. This church, a modern version of Gothic Revival, has a T-shaped plan with brick-veneered exterior walls. The church’s plain gable front has a pointed-arched entrance, four sets of paired windows, stepped buttresses at the corners, and a niche in the gable with a statue of Mary. A tall slender steeple marks the crossing of the nave, and it is clad in diamond-shaped metal shingles and adorned with Gothic-inspired arches and ornamentation. Inside, the single nave is covered by a wooden beamed ceiling. The Emil Frei Stained Glass Company created the windows, and Charles Quest painted the mural on the sanctuary wall; Eames suggested that the figures in the mural be stylized, not realistic, and designed in a manner that would relate well to the simple, austere design of the building. Subsequently, Eames’s studies at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan drew him into a broader field of design than just architecture.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Cyrus A. Sutherland with Gregory Herman, Claudia Shannon, Jean Sizemore Jeannie M. Whayne and Contributors
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Data

What's Nearby

Edwardian Inn (William A. and Sallie Short House)
Moore-Hornor House, Delta Cultural Center
Centennial Baptist Church
Historic Missouri Pacific Railroad Depot, Delta Cultural Center
Helena Museum of Phillips County (Helena Public Library)

Citation

Cyrus A. Sutherland with Gregory Herman, Claudia Shannon, Jean Sizemore Jeannie M. Whayne and Contributors, "St. Mary’s Catholic Church", [Helena-West Helena, Arkansas], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/AR-01-PH8.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of Arkansas

Buildings of Arkansas, Cyrus A. Sutherland and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2018, 250-251.

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