"For me, doing nothing is not an option," said David Henry, president of the parish council.
St. Rose may not be able now to afford a complete restoration, Henry said. Even so, he leans toward moving forward with structural strengthening that would "shore it up" and ensure the building's preservation.
The Rev. Denis O'Sullivan, the longtime pastor of St. Rose, suggested that parishioners see the original stone church as something that connects them not only to the past but also to the wider community.
"This is our history," O'Sullivan said. "It's the history of St. Rose Parish, but it's also part of the history of Santa Rosa. And we must not let this part of history fade away."
Built in 1900, the Gothic style church was the first stone structure constructed in the city, according to "Santa Rosa's Architectural Heritage," the 1982 survey by architect Dan Peterson and his wife Geraldine Peterson.
St. Rose's stonemason, Peter Maroni, was one of a small group of Italian immigrant stone cutters who fashioned blocks of basalt extracted from quarries east of the city in and around what is now Annadel State Park. Their work still stands today in Railroad Square in four structures built between 1903 and 1915, including La Rose Hotel and the iconic Northwestern Pacific Railroad Depot.
Santa Rosa today has five Catholic churches. But for the first half of the 20th century the old stone St. Rose was the sole place that Catholic parishioners gathered for worship in the city.
Thus, the church on B and 10th streets "was the center of our lives," recalled Jeanette Mitchell, a lifelong member of the parish whose maiden name was Mancini.
"My mother and father were married there and I was married there," Mitchell said.
In those years, the church was the focal point of a campus that included Ursuline High School for girls and St. Rose elementary school for boys and girls. The site became a gathering place for weddings, funerals, baptisms and first communions, but also for church festivals, high school piano concerts and pickup basketball games on the school courts.
"It still reminds me of my younger years," Santa Rosan Al Pisenti said of the church grounds. Pisenti, now 91 years old and a member of Holy Spirit Parish in Rincon Valley, said he hopes the original church will be preserved.
Change came to St. Rose when a second parish, St. Eugene's, was established in east Santa Rosa in 1950 and later in the 1960s when a new wing was added to the original stone structure at St. Rose. By all accounts, the combination of old and new was unusual and featured a central altar between the two sections.
The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake prompted a review of older structures in the Diocese of Santa Rosa. The old stone wing at St. Rose was deemed structurally unsound and closed about 1992, O'Sullivan said. Today its B Street entrance remains closed by metal security gates.
The stone building sat unused but not forgotten as the parish in the 1990s restored the former St. Rose School building.
About five years ago, parishioners began opening the old stone wing for public viewing during annual church festivals, recalled parishioner Peter Leveque. That gave many their first look at the old building's stained glass windows and its choir loft with an immense pipe organ.
Later a group of parishioners came together to consider restoring the building. Church goals were set to make a decision on the matter, and engineers and architects provided estimates of the cost and nature of the restoration work.
The structural solution, said O'Sullivan, involves replacing the wooden columns that now hold up the roof. Steel columns need to take the place of the wooden ones, and the walls need to be strengthened and better attached to the roof.
Earlier this year, the church held a series of parish meetings to explain options and estimated costs. Professional fundraisers later conducted surveys and interviews in order to estimate how much the parish of 1,800 households might be able to collect in donations.
"There seems to be an awful lot of support, more than I expected," said Len Marabella, chairman of the parish finance council.
Henry, the parish council president, said the research suggested the church initially could raise about $1.5 million as part of a joint five-year fundraising campaign for both diocesan programs and St. Rose's restoration. That could bring in enough money to obtain a loan from the Diocese and begin the basic structural work, which O'Sullivan said is estimated to cost up to $1.4 million.
On Saturday O'Sullivan will meet with members of the parish council and finance council in order to make a decision on restoration.
Those who recall the old St. Rose Church hope both parishioners and the wider community will see value in restoration.
Brook Tauzer, a parishioner and retired vice president at Santa Rosa Junior College, said the stone building remains the anchor of the city's St. Rose historic neighborhood.
"That's a handsome building, that old church," Tauzer said.
John Crevelli, a former St. Rose altar boy and retired junior college history instructor, noted that past community members have attempted to save such city landmarks as the Carrillo Adobe, the Hoag House and the old post office that now houses the Sonoma County Museum.
"I would put St. Rose in that same category of historic buildings that need to be preserved," Crevelli said.
For Leveque, the parishioner and a retired junior college biology instructor, the members of St. Rose remain stewards of a valuable legacy.
"Here these people built this beautiful church in 1900," he said. "We have a responsibility to see that it doesn't fall to the ground."
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