A joyful mural on the side of Austin’s St. Angela School welcomes students, teachers and neighbors to the site of a former church, convent and rectory.
Painted images of former students hug, clap, turn book pages and throw their heads back with laughter in a three-story-tall illustration highlighted with shades of green, yellow and blue. Their smiles burst off a wall that had been blank and hidden for decades by the former St. Angela Catholic Church at 1332 N. Massasoit Ave.
“The church had actually been 17 inches away from the south school wall,” says Lynn Fredrick, interim director of advancement at the school. “So we knew, as soon as we had it tuck-pointed, it was in good shape. We knew we wanted a mural there.” Tuck-pointing involves repairing and replacing deteriorated motor between bricks.
The school was built in 1920. The last iteration of the church — a 1,200-seat gothic building — broke ground in 1949, according to a St. Angela Parish Timeline. It served as a hub of the Austin community for decades, situated on a quiet block among well-kept Chicago bungalows. The parish closed in 2005, and the church was left vacant. Its dilapidated remains were demolished in 2017.
The empty church “was creepy, and it was dangerous,” Fredrick says. Once that was gone, the remaining land was turned into open space for the school, which is still operated by the Archdiocese of Chicago.
The footprint of the former church can be seen in the soil next to the school, as grass won’t grow there. Picnic tables entice students and others to stop and enjoy the radiant mural. The cornerstone of the former church was inserted into the school’s south wall, under the mural.
“We wanted our message to be joyful children, working, playing, praying,” Fredrick says. “The images on the mural are children who were with us in those years.”
Petrice Sanderson, the school’s director of operations, says she’s been involved with the school since her son, now 21, started preschool there. She lives nearby and “the mural adds to the block. Period,” she says. It contributes a sense of neighborhood and community, and “makes the neighborhood look way better.”
Fredrick raised about $150,000 from the school’s active alumni community, she says, and hired Chicago’s Right Way Signs to paint the massive display. School staff provided images, and Right Way Signs’ staff and mural team brought them to life, says Alex Perry, the company’s CEO. The mural was completed in 2022.
“We felt the demolition and the rebuild into a green space was a gift to the neighborhood,” especially for those who were devastated to lose the church, Fredrick says. “Instead of looking at these old abandoned buildings, they saw children playing and could hear children’s voices and see them reading in the field. When we got the mural finished, that, too, felt like a gift.”
