By Christine May

A hundred years is a long time. That is why a Centennial is a very special event. From April 12 through 19, Sacred Heart Parish will be celebrating its Centennial. Father Michael A. Morris, Pastor of Sacred Heart, sees this celebration as “a time of rejoicing – rejoicing over the glories of the past, the blessings of the present, and the hopes of the future.”

Special parish committees have been hard a work for many months planning the week-long celebration. Centennial chairman Phil Coletti says that Sacred Heart’s 100^th anniversary will be a special time for those who presently belong to the parish as well as a happy homecoming for former parishioners. Events of the week will include receptions, musical programs, a banquet and ball, and a Solemn Pontifical Mass.

The main celebration will be the Centennial Mass of Thanksgiving and Celebration on Saturday, April 19 at 5:30 p.m. Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan and the priests who have served the parish will concelebrate. For these official rites, they will be joined by the clergy of the archdiocese and visiting priests. The Sacred Heart Liturgical Choir will be assisted by the choir of Central Presbyterian Church and the Southern Brass Quintet. The Knights of Columbus, Fourth Degree, will form as honor guard for the procession.

Sacred Heart's centennial celebration officially begins April 12 at 6:30 p.m. with a reception at the parish center for first-edition subscribers to SPIRES AT THE HEART OF THE CITY – the centennial history of Sacred Heart. “SPIRES AT THE HEART OF THE CITY is a special book,” claims Phil Coletti. “Hundreds of photographs in color and black and white document the past of our parish and provide a chronicle of our contemporary church community.

“It is the story of humble beginnings in a little wooden church on Marietta Street. It is a pictorial essay on the architecture of the familiar twin-spired structure on Peachtree. SPIRES AT THE HEART OF THE CITY is about Sacred Heart people – pioneers, parish councils, choirs, and priests. It is about children. Nineteenth century altar boys and choir girls. School children in knickers and First Communion finery. And it is about the generation of young people that hurries Sacred Heart into the twenty-first century.”

Sunday, April 13, is forecast as a special opportunity for fellowship. From 2:30 to 5:30 in the afternoon, there will be a homecoming party. Sacred Heart parishioners past and present will share a heartwarming occasion which features old-fashioned entertainment and a picnic fare.

SPIRES AT THE HEART OF THE CITY reflects the life of Sacred Heart parish and its people over the span of an eventful century. Excerpts from the pages of this record provide an introduction to the full story of Sacred Heart as it reviews the past with joy and previews the future with hope.

1880-1980: The History Of The Parish

The year 1880 was an eventful one for Catholics in Atlanta, a city of 37,409 souls. The bishop of the thirty-year old Diocese of Savannah purchased property on the northeast side of Marietta Street and the southwest side of Alexander Street. On February 28, 1880, he inaugurated the parish of Saints Peter and Paul, now known as Sacred Heart Parish.

A forty by sixty foot frame church building capable of seating 300 was erected on the east side of Marietta Street. More than fifty families made up the new parish and the congregation numbered over 250. A parochial school conducted by the Sisters of Mercy stood on the corner of Jones and Marietta Street.

The first pastor, Father Patrick H. McMahon, saw the new parish through its first decade. He was succeeded by Father J.S. McCarthy in 1889. In 1890 Father Joseph F. Colbert became pastor.

In 1897 the Marist Fathers began their long association with the parish when Bishop Thomas A. Becker entrusted Saints Peter and Paul to their care. The bishop specified that the parish covered “all the north of Edgewood Avenue and to the east of the railway running parallel to Marietta Street.” This included all of North Atlanta at the time, as well as the ‘mission territory’ which composed an area of about 9,500 square miles of North Georgia.

By 1897 a new church was needed for the community. A lot was then purchased at Peachtree and Ivy. The new church was dedicated on May 1, 1898 and the parish renamed Sacred Heart of Jesus. Sacred Heart Church was consecrated on June 9, 1920.

Over the one hundred years there were a number of pastors who served Sacred Heart Parish. The first Marist Father, Reverend William Gibbons, was succeeded by Father John Gunn who later became Bishop Gunn of Natchez. In 1965 the Marist Fathers completed sixty-eight years of responsibility for Sacred Heart. Monsignor Joseph Moylan became the new pastor and diocesan priests resumed the care of the parish. Then, in turn, came Father Joseph Ware and Father John Mulroy. Father Michael A. Morris became pastor in 1973.

A Place For Worship

When Father William Gibbons and his assistant, Father John Guinan, undertook to move their 340 member congregation from the little frame building on Marietta Street, they selected the junction of Peachtree and Ivy as the site of the new Catholic church. The time was 1897, and some members of the congregation thought the property was so far out of town that it would never serve any useful purpose. The prevailing opinion, however, was that the location was in a prominent residential area destined to grow.

A young Atlanta architect, W.T. Downing, received the commission to design the new house of worship. At the age of 32, Downing had already won international recognition as a master of domestic architecture. He had built many fine homes for an exclusive clientele in Atlanta and had contributed notably to Atlanta’s commercial architecture. The Sacred Heart of Jesus was Downing’s first church.

Reflecting the French origins of the Marist Fathers who commissioned the structure, the Church of the Sacred Heart is in the French Romanesque style. The architect incorporated the ideal aspects of the Romanesque, evident in the towered façade, the interior gallery level, the three-aisled nave, the side chapels and the ribbed barrel vaulting. The French Romanesque character of the church is most notably in the constant repetition of rounded arches, visible from every perspective in the exterior and interior design of Sacred Heart.

During the Bicentennial Year, the United States Department of Interior and the Georgia Department of Natural Resources recognized Sacred Heart for the “artistically significant architecture of the church building.” On May 13, 1976, the Church of the Sacred Heart was entered in the National Register of Historic Places.