A story of stained glass

At this time of year, local churches are filled with light and decorations to welcome visitors and celebrate one of the most special days in the Christian faith. One church, Goldfield United Presbyterian, is especially blessed with beauty in its lovely stained glass windows—which have their own unique story.

Sonna Johnson, who has puzzled out and written down the history of her church’s stained glass windows, has come to enjoy the art of stained glass. “It’s fun to sit and figure out the story they’re trying to tell you,” she said.

Goldfield United Presbyterian was built in 1884. The room that is now the fellowship hall used to be the sanctuary. In 1909, the church added on the new sanctuary, and that’s when they had the opportunity to put in the stained glass. “It was at that time that Cedar Falls was either enlarging the church, or building a new one,” Johnson said. Through a Cedar Falls-based relative of one of the Goldfield congregants, the windows were passed on to Goldfield United Presbyterian, where they were installed both in the old fellowship hall and the new sanctuary.

“Originally, we thought all of the windows came from England,” Johnson said. But in 2014, when the church called in an expert to evaluate the windows’ condition, he was able to confirm that yes, the windows with gold and purple diamond panes had come from Canterbury, England, from as early as the 1500s, but that the other windows had come from the workshops of Louis Comfort Tiffany, an American artisan who became famous especially for his beautiful stained glass. “We had no idea we had Tiffany windows, and this guy went, ‘Oh my gosh, do you know what you have here?’” she said.

For the full story, see the December 22 edition of the Monitor.