Let’s call this the Project's "backup church," since we often used it as a secondary option when we were unable to attend our primary parish, St. Helena. That said, I had never been in the St. William upper church. Any and all masses I ever attended were downstairs. Easter Sunday seemed like the perfect opportunity to discover this rarely seen, often heard about treasure.
Unfortunately, St. William is neither particularly large nor particularly ornate. I think part of the problem lies in its design. St. William is the roughly the same general size and height of a lot of other churches, but its lower church strangely lies at ground level, not mostly below it. Thus, they weren’t able to use most of their height to devote to the upper church; and, probably due to zoning and / or costs, they weren’t able to build it any higher. The result is an “upper” church so small that it could qualify as a lower church at some other places. Compounding the problem is its decoration; frankly speaking, it doesn’t have any. The church is just incessantly plain. The stained glass windows are spartan, most of the walls are bare, and there’s just little effort at any kind of ornamentation. Really, there are suburban churches better than this. (And you know how I hate to give suburban churches credit.)
Don’t get me wrong—it’s an interesting parish, and the Greco-Roman-style columns out front add an interesting flair. But inside, it just doesn’t measure up. I expected a lot more from a parish this old.
Size Rating: 6.5 out of 10
Ornamentation Rating: 5 out of 10
Design Rating: 5.5 out of 10 crosses.
UPDATE:
A couple of sources, including St. William parishioner Ken Houser, have notified me that while the parish was founded in 1920, the present church was not fully completed until 1963, due to a myriad of design and financial issues. Also, the church is supposedly positioned on bedrock, forcing them to build the lower church at ground level.
These points certainly explain why this church is among the least impressive we've seen. But it also makes you wonder why this parish struggled so much to "get the job done," when St. Martin of Tours and St. Helena, two of their younger neighbors, got their acts together quickly and uncorked two amazing pieces of architecture.
