04/06/2023

JELD-WEN helps historic Arizona church reopen its doors

From a boarded-up, abandoned space, the Sacred Heart church of Phoenix is restored to a much-loved landmark of unity and pride

Christmas Eve, 2021 marked a special day for an historic church in Phoenix, Arizona. After being virtually abandoned to make way for airport expansion, the Sacred Heart church reopened its doors, with JELD-WEN’s help, to become a hub for the community again.

As part of a fundraising campaign in the 1950s, nearly every resident of the Golden Gate Barrio (neighborhood) in Phoenix, including children, bought a red brick to build the church of the Sacred Heart. But by the 1980s, around 6,000 local people from the barrio – one of the earliest Hispanic neighborhoods in Phoenix – were forced to abandon their homes and their church to make way for the nearby Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport expansion.

For several decades, the church stood empty in a sea of empty lots. Finally, when it was deemed that the land was no longer needed by the airport, the community petitioned to get their church back and, in 2018, the City of Phoenix voted to allow the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix to renovate and reopen it for good.

Securing the building was a priority

By then, the handsome building, complete with Italian marble altar, bell tower and copper dome, was in a poor state. “The diocese contacted us and said ‘Hey, help us here! What can you do? To keep the building clean and dry for restoration, you’re the key to getting it secured,’” says Jessica Dirksen, territory sales manager for JELD-WEN North America in the Phoenix area.

Bringing beauty and security to people’s spaces is at the heart of JELD-WEN’s purpose. The company worked on getting the building weathertight. Next step: restoring the church’s front doors to their former glory, a project which involved some detective work.

“We had to look at black-and-white photographs, see what there used to be and how we could match it,” says Jessica. “We could also look at the wood beams and overall structure and then match the exterior doors — the mahogany, the stain — to what’s inside the church,” she says.

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“They matched it perfectly,” says Father Paul Sullivan of the Phoenix Diocese. “Those doors don’t just look good, they’re secure. Doors matter for us, and this was the biggest part of our renovation so far.”

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Sacred Heart of a community

Along with the photographs from parishioners came a treasure trove of memories, and a sign of how dear the church is to people from a neighborhood that no longer exists since it’s been completely knocked down.

“It’s important to me because I grew up in the neighborhood,” says Armed Forces veteran Rey Rodriguez. “I was an altar boy at this church. Just being here makes me feel at home.”

“I want our younger generation to know what was here,” says parishioner Patricia Gurule. “To know that this was a thriving community, and the church was a big part of that.”