Stained Glass banner image

Featured Window

Window of the Month
Our Lady of Grace, Dearborn Heights, Michigan

Click any image to enlarge.





Featured Windows, April 1998

Holy Rosary Catholic Church, Cedar, MI

Building: Holy Rosary Church

City: Cedar

State: Michigan


Holy Family in Nazareth

This detail of the "Holy Family in Nazareth" window shows Joseph and Mary with the child Jesus outside their home at Nazareth in Galilee. Joseph, a carpenter, holds an axe, a symbol of his trade, while Mary holds a spindle. With the aid of a small angel, the child is constructing a cross, symbolizing his future crucifixion.

Holy Rosary Church was designed by Milwaukee architects Breilmaier and Sons and constructed in the early 1920s, with much of the labor done by the men of the parish.

Its windows were made during World War I by the F. X. Zettler Company in Munich, Germany. According to church records, the windows were buried for a time, to protect them from damage during the war, and were shipped to this country in 1922 to be installed in the church. F. X. Zettler, once associated with the Munich studio of his father-in-law Joseph Mayer, created numerous windows for European and American churches in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Holy Rosary Catholic Church of Cedar was registered in the Michigan Stained Glass Census by Leona Witkowski of Cedar.

(MSGC 1995.0072)

Text by Betty MacDowell, Michigan Stained Glass Census, April , 1998.