Streetscapes: Emmanuel Masqueray designed heavenly small churches, too

The Cathedral of St. Paul is marking its centennial this year, a celebration that is rightly returning the building's architect, Emmanuel Masqueray, to the spotlight.

To the casual eye, it may appear that the French immigrant — who also designed the lavish Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis — was only truly in his element when he was given carte blanche with a bloated, Beaux Arts-worthy construction budget.

Yet Masqueray left a trail of far more modest houses of worship in his wake, including four in St. Paul. They continue, nearly a century after his death, to enrich the city's profile.

The state's — and possibly the world's — unofficial expert on all things Masqueray is Minneapolis resident Al Lathrop. Now retired, Lathrop was the director of the Northwest Architectural Archives at the University of Minnesota Libraries.

Lathrop's interest in Masqueray began to percolate in the mid-1970s. His extensive research eventually led to a fascinating 1980 profile in Minnesota History magazine. Lathrop, author of "Churches of Minnesota" and "Minnesota Architects" (both published by the University of Minnesota Press), should write a Masqueray book. There's certainly plenty of material.

Let's start with the Church of St. Louis, King of France in downtown St. Paul. For his Catholic churches, Masqueray tended to rely upon a kitchen-sink stew of Romanesque, Renaissance and Baroque details, and this lovely red brick and limestone beauty from 1910 is no different, with its symmetrical facade and gracious barrel-vaulted interior.

It's Lathrop's favorite. "In part because it was Masqueray's favorite," he said. "He called it his 'little gem.' And it is. It has a lot of very nice detail in it, and it's graceful, and so nicely proportioned. It's on a relatively small lot, so he didn't have a lot of space to work with, and yet he designed a very fine little church."

Agreed, although a close second surely would be Bethlehem Lutheran Church, on the city's East Side.

For his Protestant clients, Masqueray tended to favor Gothic influences, and Bethlehem is a prime example of the style's enduring strength. The tidy red brick church, with its corner tower and peaked side gables, has firmly anchored the intersection of Margaret and Forest streets for a century.

"It has been a stable and welcoming presence in a neighborhood that has seen a lot of changes," said the Rev. Tom Park, a South Korean transplant who took over leadership of the 400-member congregation this year. "As an immigrant myself, it's a pleasure to be here."

Pay no attention to the adjacent Parish House, a Spartan midcentury mismatch that dates to 1957. Instead, spend a Sunday morning in the sanctuary. It's Masqueray at his most restrained, an intimate, sparsely decorated space capped by a timbered peaked ceiling and illuminated with richly colored windows. It has served the congregation — German for decades, and now with a large Hmong contingent — very well.

"You can worship God anywhere and everywhere," Park said. "But when you have a lovely atmosphere, it helps your worship life. You feel a reverence inside this place."

Getting a peek inside Masqueray's other local Protestant commission — St. Paul's Episcopal Church on the Hill — isn't easy. The building, which echoes the romantic form of an English country Gothic church, closed this spring after the small parish, weighed down with a substantial deferred-maintenance backlog, relocated to more manageable digs. The building's future use is uncertain.

"All options are on the table," said the Rev. John Dwyer, a trustee for the Episcopal Church in Minnesota. "We're taking it one step at a time."

When it comes the building's exterior, the word picturesque applies. Masqueray made magic with golden, locally mined limestone, which, in an early example of green construction, was reused from the church's prior downtown St. Paul home and hauled up the hill. The copper-clad steeple has been a Summit Avenue beacon for 113 years.

"It's a beautiful, well-thought-out building," Dwyer said. "The windows are magnificent, and the acoustics are amazing."

An equally splendid interior lies a mile to the west, at the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas, located on the parklike campus of the University of St. Thomas. Masqueray, in full-on Italian Renaissance mode, managed to conjure a sense of ecclesiastical mystery inside a dutiful brown-brick wrapper. The project was under construction when he died, and was completed by his acolytes.

Sadly, a fifth Saintly City example from the Masqueray portfolio no longer exists. It was the Church of the Holy Redeemer, a typically Masqueray-esque mashup of Romanesque and Renaissance styles from 1915; it met the wrecking ball in 1967 to make way for Interstate 35E.

Born in a Normandy port town in 1861 and trained at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Emmanuel Louis Masqueray immigrated to the United States to work for several prominent New York City practitioners, including Richard Morris Hunt and the firm of Carrère and Hastings. In 1901, he landed the influential job of what Lathrop said would be labeled "chief draftsman" of the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition in St. Louis.

While working at the fair (his salary was $666.66 a month, for the three years), kismet struck: Masqueray met Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul, who was looking for an architect to design a cathedral for St. Paul and a basilica for Minneapolis.

A devoted Francophile and a savvy fundraiser, Ireland became Masqueray's great patron, wielding his considerable influence in the Upper Midwest to steer projects to the architect, including cathedrals in Sioux Falls, S.D., and Wichita, Kan., as well as more than two dozen parish churches in five states.

Masqueray was 43 when he moved to St. Paul in 1905, and the city was his home base for the rest of his life. He leased a downtown office in the Endicott Building, and lived a short walk from the cathedral in the swank (and, sadly, long demolished) Aberdeen Hotel. Several of Masqueray's well-trained assistants went on to prominent careers, most notably Edwin Lundie.

The ever-dapper Masqueray must have cut quite a figure. He enjoyed a kind of rock-star status among locals, in part because he'd trained at the École, which, at the time, was the world's leading architectural training ground. Being a cultured Frenchman didn't hurt.

"He had an ego," said Lathrop with a laugh.

Masqueray died on May 26, 1917. His name might not have the instant recognition of, say, native son (and Minnesota State Capitol mastermind) Cass Gilbert, but Masqueray is not forgotten. About once a month, a visitor will stop by the office at St. Paul's Calvary Cemetery, asking for the location of his final resting place.

He's buried, next to his mother, in a grave capped by a stately marker. It's carved in the same gray Minnesota granite Masqueray chose for the Cathedral.

Rick Nelson • 612-673-4757 • Twitter: @RickNelsonStrib