More on Annunciation Church, KCMO

I first featured Annunciation Church on November 21, 2005. As noted in some of my other updates, the Church of the Annunciation became the home of the consolidated Church of the Risen Christ in 1975, and it was itself shuttered sometime after This Far by Faith was published in 1992.

Annunciation was another church that took some time to get going. As you can see from the cornerstone photo in my original post, it was laid in October 1903. However, it wasn't fully completed, furnished and dedicated until 1924. The original cost of building was projected to be $75,000, although (based on the cost of other churches in that era) it undoubtedly cost more to build. The debt from the original construction was paid in 1946.

It was in a Norman Gothic style, and like its sister churches in the area—it was designed to hold about 1,000 people. As was plain from looking at the façade, there were towers for the east and west façade planned but never built. This Far by Faith has a rendering of the church with the towers as planned at page 112. The stained glass (now gone) was made in Innsbruck, and was appraised at $650,000 in the 1980s. The sanctuary featured a baldachino 34' tall and 21' wide. There was a renovation of some sort in the 1940s, and another in the 1975 after the consolidation. More properly, the 1975 work was a demolition: the liturgical vandals wrecked the baldachino and communion rail and replaced the original altar (which, from the description, sounded beautiful) with some sort of table.

On this, the fortieth anniversary of the close of the Second Vatican Council, let's all give a cheer for the aggiornamento and its effects on Kansas City, shall we? A post is coming this weekend on that topic.