Featured Windows, December 2003

Sacred Heart Catholic Church Window

Building: Sacred Heart Church

City: Hudson

State: Michigan

The Nativity Window at Sacred Heart Catholic Church depicts the central characters in the familiar Christmas story, as related in the biblical book of Luke. Joseph, holding a staff, stands behind Mary, who is seated with the infant Jesus on her lap. Shepherds on either side have come to see the newborn child. A shepherd lad holds one sheep, while another lies at Mary's feet. The scene takes place in a Bethlehem inn's stable, where the couple from Nazareth has been given shelter for the night.

Sacred Heart Catholic Church was founded in the 1850s to serve the many Irish immigrant families that settled in the Hudson area south of the Irish Hills. An early Gothic Revival brick edifice was replaced in 1905 by the present Romanesque Revival church, designed by Detroit architect Harry J. Rill and constructed out of fieldstone provided by parishioners from local farms. Its stained glass windows, made by an unidentified studio, came from Munich, Germany. The eighteen-foot-high Nativity Window was a gift to the church from Arthur H. and Isabella White. Renovations to the church in 1983 were completed in time for its 125th Anniversary and rededication in 1984.

Sacred Heart Catholic Church was registered in the Michigan Stained Glass Census by Rondel L. Waldo of Hudson.

(MSGC 1997.0065)

Text by Betty MacDowell, Michigan Stained Glass Census, December , 2003.