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1997
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Contents © 1997
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

Sacred Heart, Coronado

The designers of Sacred Heart in Coronado, 77 years ago, were confident that modern and traditional forms of many different styles could be harmoniously integrated. The building they produced in this lovely, peaceful neighborhood is a testimony to their vision and taste.

A spirit of modernity is expressed chiefly on the exterior, where the extreme simplicity of the forms and plaster surfaces exerts a calm power through the minimal decorative elements. The shape of the broad facade, is echoed in the standing slab at the right, where the church's title and hours are displayed. The shallow dome of the facade, with its gold cross, is balanced by the more dramatic half-egg dome of the adjacent tower, which is boldly supported on a complex of Art-Deco steps. Though disparate in size and shape, the domes are unified by being covered with sky-blue mosaic tiles, with the addition of gold ribs to the tall tower dome.

The chief features of the facade are the shallowly protruding entrance porch (surmounted by a statue of Our Lord, His arms extended), and, above, a long, recessed rectangle framing a blank arcade. The arch shape is repeated in the portal, with a circle-in-demilune motif over the double doorway. The narrow side and back doorways exhibit the same motif. At the rear, in the midst of the flat, plaster surfaces that give the whole structure its tone, an important symbolic motif appears: a broad arch within which stand three thin, blank arches, representations of the Holy Trinity.

Inside the church, with its simple shoebox shape, this same motif is repeated on the long side walls. The triple arches are now treated as doors to the confessionalss. The altar wall is pierced by still another great arch, behind which a deep recess presents a symmetrical tableau of restrained but noble theatricality.

In this scene, the slender body of Our Lord on the cross hangs above the black stone altar, His head bent to the side in pathos -- very different from the majestic, welcoming figure on the facade. At either side stands the white statue of an angel looking at the crucifixion image, arms extended toward it, as though to present it as the sacred spectacle from which the whole church takes its meaning.

The altar table in front is supported on four short columns with carved Romanesque capitals. In a building in which every detail has its calculated place, it is no surprise to find this motif repeated with variations in the two side chapels. The left chapel, where the altar elements are handsomely supplemented with curvilinear and vegetative designs in metal, is devoted to Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Three stained-glass windows portray her miraculous cure by the Blessed Virgin, her blessing by Pope Leo XIII as she entered the Carmelite convent, and the blessing she received from her father as she took her vows. The windows thus illustrate three sources of the saint's holiness: her family's piety, the mediation of spiritual calling by the Church, and the inspiration of the Mother of God.

Most of the other images in the building refer directly to the lives of Our Lord and Our Lady. To left and right of the altar-wall's archway, icon-like mosaics depict the Madonna and Child and -- in the church's only prominent symbol of the devotion alluded to in its title -- Our Lord pointing to His heart. The altar in the chapel on the right features modern statues of the Holy Family, in a stylized rustic realism, with the carpenter's tools and wooden beams referring realistically to Joseph's workshop and functioning as a symbolic forecast of the cross.

The building's main stained-glass program lies on the side walls, in long rectangular panels (like that above the porch on the facade) divided into vertical windows. On the left, two images of saints flank a seven-window representation of Leonardo's Last Supper. The eight panels of the right wall show -- in single or double windows -- scenes such as the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Holy Family, the Magi, and the Coronation of the Virgin (the latter with Christ and His Mother on the left, and God the Father enthroned on the right). The style continues the High Renaissance manner of the Leonardo reproduction, with dramatic forms and rich, lustrous colors.

Also notable in Sacred Heart's harmonious assemblage of various styles are the stations of the cross, with their naive but vigorous drama, each station a clustered, triangle-shaped, fully sculpted, pastel-painted, dramatic scene, on an extended platform supported by a pair of angels. The Crucifixion, larger than the rest, is particularly powerful. --Sean-Michael de Carvalho

Sacred Heart

672 B Avenue (on Seventh Street)

Coronado