110 years of soot scrubbed from stained glass at Central Presbyterian Church in Tarentum

The sun will be shining more brightly on parishioners at Central Presbyterian Church in Tarentum.

Eleven enormous stained-glass windows, removed and boarded in 2022, are being reinstalled this week after a meticulous project that took hundreds of hours to clean and restore them.

“It’s not just the color that’s brighter,” said Ralph Mills, co-owner of Pittsburgh Stained Glass Studios. “The work brings them back to a condition that’s like new.”

Central Presbyterian was built in 1914 at the corner of Allegheny Street and East Fourth Avenue. The church windows — 45 in all — were created by Italian immigrants with brilliant hues and painstaking detail. Some are kaleidoscope designs and others depict Gospel verses.

“The overall appearance of the windows is striking — before versus after,” said David Rankin, the church’s business administrator. “The colors are bright and clean, and they let significantly more light into the building after they have been restored.

“The difference is so dramatic that, after restoration, they cast strong shadows and beams of colored light inside where before there was none.”

Phased restoration began about 10 years ago and garnered much interest from the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation. An ensuing partnership, along with aggressive grant writing, helped church leaders steward the project, which will top $335,000 when all of the windows are completed in the years to come.

Parishioners have fronted the lion’s share of the work, fundraising for which began nearly three decades ago.

This phase sits at about $40,000. It included five classroom-size windows about 40- by 48-inches, three larger ones and two transoms, all along the front side of the building facing Allegheny Street.

“In order to qualify for grant funding, the church must be able to demonstrate its active role as a community center, meeting people’s needs to gather and be an integral part of activity beyond the church’s own worshipping congregation,” Rankin said.

Central meets the qualifications and then some. It offers a summer lunch program for children, a clothing closet, concert series and $1 weekend breakfasts.

“Even though our building is over 110 years old, Central Church is committed to serving the community and being a good steward of the resources it receives,” Rankin said.

The church most recently was awarded $10,000 through the landmark foundation’s Historic Religious Properties program. It was the fifth such endowment in recent years. Rankin said they also received $15,000 in grants from the Ira Wood Charitable Trust for some of the work.

Pittsburgh Stained Glass Studios, based in Pittsburgh’s West End, has been the contractor on the project since its inception.

Co-owner Kirk Weaver said the company has breathed new life into churches throughout the Alle-Kiski Valley, including Trinity Lutheran Church and St. Mary, both in Freeport.

Restoration of one window can take up to 40 hours, Mills said.

“We make a rubbing and then we take apart every single piece,” said Mills, who discovered his passion by chance through a community college course 30 years ago. “We keep everything looking like the original.”

Windows are disassembled, scrubbed and reassembled.

On Tuesday, he was joined by co-workers David Olshinsky and Emily Bruce prepping the site for reinstallation. The trio crawled into the window frames and spent hours sanding away years of layered paint from the sills.

All of the windows in the current phase of restoration are expected to be installed by mid-July.

To date, four large Tudor-arched windows have been restored, along with all of the windows facing the parking lot and those along Third Avenue.

Rankin expects at least three more phases of construction for the dozen classroom windows along Fourth Avenue and the sanctuary skylights.

Remaining costs are expected to top $110,000.

He said parishioners and passersby notice when the windows “come home.”

No longer grimy, they add a special sparkle to the already-grand building, he said.

“It is beautiful architecture inside and out,” Tarentum historian Cindy Homburg said. “It is a gem in the community.”