Heaven Sent

New Mequon church is simply divine

By Candace Doyle
Editor

The congregation of St. Boniface Episcopal Church felt invisible in its 1950s worship space.

When considering a new building to replace its unassuming church the congregation was rapidly outgrowing, parishioners wanted their new place of worship to be "a distinctive civic presence in our town."

That's certainly what Hammel, Green & Abrahamson Inc. delivered when it added 7,576 square feet of space to the Mequon Road church.

"The wonderful thing about the interior space is you walk into that church and have such an uplifting feeling," said Ron Luskin, a senior associate with HGA.

And the exterior, with its copper façade, will take on an entirely different look as it oxidizes, he said.

"It was a project that very much challenged our engineers as well as our architects," Luskin said.

Indeed. Jim Shield, design architect on the $2.5 million project, said the church posed many challenges, including working with a large building committee.

"These building committees will beat the character out of a project," he said.

But that wasn't true with St. Boniface's committee.

"The building committee allowed a visually strong project to come through," he said.

Churches, too, typically have tight budgets.

"I also think, like normal, they wanted to build three times as much as they had money for," said Shield. "The challenge is how to keep the client's expectations for quality high."

But Shield met the challenge, and is pleased with the finished project, which now has a worship space that can accommodate up to 400 parishioners, a new narthex for social events before and after services and the tower spiral.

Shield is particularly pleased with the use of copper, typically used for roofs only, on the church's exterior.

"It's using a traditional material in a new way," he said.

He also likes the mainly wood interior.

"The interior is really a wood room with wood trusses, a wood ceiling," said Shield. "Being a wood room, it really provides the warmth the client was looking for."

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