St. Dominic Parish Awarded $500,000 Matching Grant to Preserve Historic Denver Church
Selected from hundreds of applicants nationwide, the century-old parish will use the matching grant to restore its historic church and preserve a landmark of Catholic faith in North Denver for generations to come.
St. Dominic Parish in Denver is one of only 30 congregations nationwide selected for a major preservation grant, receiving a $500,000 matching award if the local community provides $500,000, for a total of $1 million to help restore its century-old church.
The National Fund for Sacred Places announced $9.1 million in grant funding on Tuesday to help preserve historic faith communities across the country. The program, a collaboration between Partners for Sacred Places and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, offers financial assistance to congregations from diverse faith traditions.
For St. Dominic, the award comes as a major boost to its “Upon this Rock — Preserving our Home” capital campaign. Together with parishioners and community supporters, the matching grant will make possible much-needed repair and cleaning of the building’s outer masonry and tuckpointing.
“When someone feels so humbled by a recognition, words fail,” said Father Luke Barder, O.P., the parish’s pastor. “The gratitude is that it allows us to achieve something that we knew we could never achieve alone. This is transformative for us, but it also fills me with a sense of pride, not just for the parish, but I’m also really happy for Denver and the Church in Colorado.”
Just last year, St. Dominic celebrated its 100th anniversary on the corner of 29th Avenue and Federal Boulevard. That this grant award comes at the end of the parish’s centennial year is all the more meaningful for Father Barder.
“From this building have come generations of Denverites who have contributed not only to the well-being of our community, but to the history of the city of Denver and this great state of Colorado we all so love, which has also celebrated the significant sesquicentennial anniversary,” Father Barder said. “For that to be highlighted in some way says something about the vibrancy of the Catholic Church in our country, and the history and the impact that it’s had.”
St. Dominic was selected as one of 30 awardees from 466 applications, which represents the parish’s long-standing role in Denver’s life, Father Barder said.
From its founding, the parish has been marked by profound faith and courageous witness, especially given the Ku Klux Klan’s power in North Denver at the time of St. Dominic’s founding.
“This beautiful Gothic cathedral was beyond our means, but we are glad to have a magnificent house for our Lord,” one founding parishioner recalled, according to handwritten notes in the parish archive. “The KKK was very active in North Denver, and we needed to be impressive.”
In short, it has always been more than a building, Father Barder explained.
“We built it this big precisely to make a statement,” he told the Denver Catholic on the occasion of the parish’s centennial. “We are physically an icon of North Denver.”
Shortly after opening, the parish responded to community needs during the Great Depression, opening one of the first credit unions in the state to support small businesses and farmers in need.
Today, St. Dominic continues to preach the Gospel in and out of season, challenging parishioners and the larger community to live the faith beyond the church walls.
“We as a parish are very cognizant of the role that the church plays in being witnesses to faith in God, faith in Christ,” Father Barder told the Denver Catholic last year. “Our preaching is incarnated in a true humanity.”
Now with the matching grant from the National Fund for Sacred Places, St. Dominic is poised to complete much-needed preservation work “to ensure the parish can remain a home for future Denverites for the next 100 years,” Father Barder said.
But they can’t do it alone.
“I’d like to invite everybody to help celebrate this recognition, for the church, the archdiocese and Northern Colorado, to participate and help us match the grant,” Father Barder said. “It’s a one-to-one match, so I invite people to help celebrate this and to help us meet that goal.”
The parish has already received substantial support, Father Barder shared, and he’s confident that energy will only continue.
“I’m grateful for that excitement because we’ve had not just parishioners but friends of the parish and archdiocese, friends of the Dominicans in the Midwest, who have joined in this mission with us as well,” he noted. “So I invite others to join us, too.”
For more information on how to give in support of the matching grant, please visit stdominicdenver.org or give directly here.
