Annunciation Church, Kansas City, Missouri

The reader who tipped me off to St. Francis Seraph also suggested I drive by Annunciation Church at 31st and Benton. This church, dedicatd in October 1903, isn't a large one by height (as with Holy Name) or length (as with St. Vincents) but it appears to have a large, wide nave and very big transcrepts.
Obviously, towers were planned (or at least allowed for). The stained glass is gone, but I couldn't see inside. I had to jump a small chain link fence and pull away the weeks to get a shot of the cornerstone, which reads as follows:

(Alpha Chi-Rho Omega)
DEO
TRINC ET UNO
Ut BVM de ANNUNCIATIONE
Culiel Sacero
FECIT
Operis Faciendi Laridem Aussilialem
Rite Ditatum Manu
IN JESU
Pontifex Joanus
10 Octob AD MCMIII


(My Latin is so limited, that I'm not going to embarrass myself by attempting a translation).

I'm told that this church was (in the first round of closings) the surviving church for the merged parishes of Annunciation, Holy Name and St. Vincent's, and that it was subsequently closed itself in the mid-1990s. I don't know whether the merged parish was "Annunciation" or if it was rededicated as something else.

Obviously, though currently vacant, the building has been in recent use (i.e., in the last decade, given that there is air conditioning equipment jutting out here and there (and marring the lines of the building). Does anyone have any information that's more specific than this? I've also attached the cornerstone of the parish school, which is of much more recent construction--1960s or 1970s. It appears the school me still be in use for some purpose.
Please share details if you have them!

UPDATE FEBRUARY 17, 2006.

Well, nobody shared any details, so I had to do my own research again. Annunciation was created out of St. John Francis Regis parish on May 25, 1872. At its founding, it was the third parish in Kansas City. After meeting in an empty store at 12th and Wyoming for a few months, a frame church was built (in 7 days!) at 14th and Wyoming. In 1880 they built a brick church adjacent to it at a cost of $40,000. In 1898, the facilities at 14th and Wyoming were bought by the railroad, and the parish was reestablished in what was then the countryside. The boundaries were 27th Street to the north and Brooklyn to the West, with no southern or eastern boundaries. Ground was broken on the new church in November 1902, and construction on what was to be a $75,000 church began in earnest in 1903, but work was intermittent due to money shortages. It it wasn't dedicated until in 1924, and the debt wasn't paid until 1946. The original plan for the church did, in fact, include towers that were never built, as I surmised back in November. Below you can see a rendering of what the church might have looked like if fully executed.

The stained glass windows (now removed) were made in Austria and installed in 1924. A magnificent altar (donated by Jim Pendergast) and baldachino (designed by Deprato Service and Rigalicograced the church, which was still open at the time This Far by Faith, vol II was published. Here's the description of the baldachino, at pages 111-12:

An extraordinary feature of the church was the baldacchino. It was basically a dome ofver the altar supported on four pillars. It is described as follows: "The baldachono propert is 34 feet in height to the top of its high-flung Cross; the width over all is 21 feet. There are four massive columns of Paonazza Scagliola mounted upon bases of Italian marble made resplendent with panels in Breccia Rossa. These handsome Scagliola monoliths support a richly ornamental cornice upon which rests the canopy artistically executed in conformity with the architectural style of the church. A beautiful ceiling of gold and colored mosaic, pure oriental in type, is seen from below.

My sources tell me that the altar and baldachino are still in place and intact, which is delightful news, considering the awful things that happened to the interiors of other churches nearby (i.e., Holy Trinity). I have to guess that the liturgical vandals from the Helmsing/Sullivan era couldn't raise enough money in the poor parish to wreck it and haul off all that marble.

In 1975, Annunciation, Holy Name, and St. Vincent merged. The Annunciation parish plant was the site of the new Church of the Risen Christ. The Church of the Risen Christ featured such events as "'Stations," [] a liturgica drama characterized by dance, dialogue and music as the congregation moves in reflection on the traditional 14 movements of the Station of the Cross," a theatre company, and an anniversary celebration in 1979 featuring preaching by Rev Emmanuel Cleaver (yes, that's the heretical minister who's now, unfortunately, our Congressman, not a Catholic priest). The Spirit of Vatican II couldn't sustain the parish, however, and sometime in the 1990s, the parish was supressed and the remnant in the pew was packed off to yet another church.