Artful transforming former church site into artists haven in Cleveland Heights

A band of artists has left one colorful, innovative, sometimes troubled site for another, both of them in the colorful, innovative, sometimes troubled neighborhood of Coventry in the city of Cleveland Heights.

The nonprofit Artful, denied a new lease at the former Coventry School, has bought and started transforming the former St. Alban’s Episcopal Church a few blocks away on Euclid Heights Boulevard. 

The school, a bunkered brick building with open classrooms, has spurred litigation and much debate. The church, shake-shingled and glass-peaked, has experienced arson, theft, rare interfaith collaboration and experimental art preservation.

Brady Dindia, Artful’s board president, says of its old and new homes, “We’re strong believers in reuse and readaptations. We kept [Coventry] going to serve lots of people. That’s what we’re trying to do at St. Alban’s.”

Educators, ministers and artists all try to inspire. “We nurture people in a similar way,” says Dindia. “We bring them closer to who they want to be.”

Players in the institution’s long dramas range from University Hospitals to what’s now NASA Glenn Research Center to the Do Good Day Hub for adults with disabilities to six winners of the prestigious Cleveland Arts Prize. The settings are a neighborhood long considered a hippie haven in a liberal, often contentious suburb, now embroiled in a mayoral recall drive.

Welcome and unwelcome churchgoers

St. Alban’s began in 1892 as St. Andrew’s in-the-East, a mission church at Murray Hill and Fairview Roads. Five years later, oxen hauled the building uphill on logs to 2555 Euclid Heights Blvd. at the corner of Edgehill Road.

Nearly a century later, St. Justin Martyr’s Day, June 1, fell on a Saturday. That night, in the otherwise empty St. Alban’s, someone lit a fire behind the pulpit.

On Sunday morning, parishoners found the building mostly destroyed. They worshipped on the lawn and salvaged what contents they could, including two badly charred paintings: a copy of Rafael’s “Madonna of the Chair” by Florence’s Vittorio Bianchini, who lived from 1797 to 1880, and an anonymous image of Mary Magdalene believed to be from the 1880s.

The Cleveland Museum of Art tried to restore the paintings with little success. So the church let what was then NASA Lewis Research Center experiment on them with atomic oxygen. By one account, they came out even cleaner than before the fire.

Scientists published the results, and demand spread. They restored an anonymous portrait of Jesus from St. Stanislaus Catholic Church, where a Franciscan intern had killed the pastor and tried to hide the crime with arson. They went to Pittsburgh and removed a vandal’s lipsticky kiss mark from Andy Warhol’s “Bathtub” at his namesake museum.

Since then, the Madonna has developed two small rips and the Mary Magdalene has gone missing. For a fee, NASA Glenn will still restore paintings that have resisted more traditional methods. [Interested owners can contact sharon.k.miller@nasa.gov.]

Fire forges friendship

Meanwhile, Rabbi Bruce Abrams of Euclid’s reformed Temple Ner Tamid was looking to open a satellite location in Cleveland Heights. The innovative Abrams performed interfaith marriages and same-sex marriages. He also started a program training people with addictions to build homes.

After St. Alban’s fire, Abrams helped the church and architect William B. Morris, who’d won a Cleveland Arts prize, plan a new building with no cross or Star of David. In the sanctuary’s rear wall were built-in cabinets for the Sacrament (bread and wine) and the Torah (Jewish scrolls). Ner Tamid rented the sanctuary on Saturday mornings.

When the new building opened, The Plain Dealer wrote, “The agreement between the two congregations to share a house of worship is one of the finest examples of interfaith friendship and cooperation ever.”

Ner Tamid member Bill Droe recalls the church as bright, comfortable and hospitable. “The people were extremely good to us.”

But some Ner Tamid members resisted Abrams’ outreaches. Soon he left the ministry and Ner Tamid left St. Alban’s, merging to form Temple Israel Ner Tamid in Mayfield Heights.

In 2013, a burglar took some valuables from St. Alban’s that had survived the arson, including two chalices from the old St. Andrew’s. Some of the goods eventually were recovered from pawnshops.

Meanwhile, the church was losing members. It closed in 2020 and stayed vacant until Artful’s arrival.

A school becomes a hub

Coventry School was designed for kindergarteners through fifth graders by Richard Fleischman, another Arts Prize winner. It opened in 1976 at 2843 Washington Blvd. with 46,852 usable square feet. 

In the early 1990s, volunteers enduring downpours in the schoolyard built a popular PEACE Playground, PEACE standing for People Enhancing a Child’s Environment. The playground was recently rebuilt.

In 2007, with enrollment falling, a lawsuit to keep the school open failed. In the ensuing years, the building has hosted a wide range of artists, nonprofits, and commercial tenants, such as Ensemble Theatre, the Cleveland Heights Teachers Union, Lake Erie Ink, Do Good Day Hub, DanceCleveland, People’s Choice Payee Services, Grace Communion Cleveland and University Hospitals, which briefly trained workers there.

In 2017, some of the artists formed Artful, which occupied about 12,000 square feet at the former school. The group’s Arts Prize winners have included Shannon Morris, its director; Darius Steward, a trustee; and Robin VanLear, who founded Parade the Circle.

In 2018, the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Board of Education sold the property for $1 to the Heights Libraries, whose Coventry Branch borders the Peace campus. Over the years, the landlords and tenants have disagreed about the building’s financial viability. Tenants have tried to buy the school but were limited at times to monthly leases. They publicized their cause, distributed yard signs and drew much community support.

Last year, giving Morris the Arts Prize for community leadership, Prize director Effie Nunes told Ideastream, “Hey, if this helps her argument a little more, that’s a plus in my eyes.”

It wasn’t enough. The library refused to extend some leases past this January and others past this year. Now most tenants have found new spaces in the area.

Creatives at church

Cuyahoga County valued St. Alban’s last year at $1.473 million. But, thanks to anonymous donors, Artful bought it for $300,000 cash down. It agreed to fix the building’s few code violations and use it to benefit the community.

Now Artful is reconfiguring the church for studios. Its architect is John Williams, another Arts Prize winner, who renovated what became the downtown Heinen’s and the Transformer Station.

At last report, 20 Artful members had committed to the new site, and three were considering it. Leaders didn’t know yet if they’d have room for new members, but hopefuls could join a waiting list.

Member Sylvia Munodawafa says that Artful has given her valuable space, inspiration and connections, leading to shows and residencies. “It really expedited my career.”

Member Donna Marchetti says, “Being in that environment infused so much energy into my work.” She and a colleague have run a workshop together and shopped for supplies together in Holmes County.

Dindia says that the Heights has many artists and little studio space. She hopes that Artful can give them more stable quarters as a landlord instead of a tenant. 

Artful hosts many public events and hopes soon to move them to St. Alban’s. But first it needs a yet undetermined amount of money for a sprinkler system. Despite the arson, the second building had no such system, none being required for churches.

This year’s free PEACE Pops will take place instead at the Cleveland Heights Community Center, 1 Monticello Blvd., from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday, July 18. As usual, it will feature artwork, workshops, music, an open mic and more. Registration is requested.

Bishop Anne B. Jolly, who leads the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio, says of St. Alban’s, “We are delighted that the building was purchased by Artful, which is committed to continuing its legacy as a place for community connection and joy.”

Sheryl Banks, library communications manager, says that her board has not decided yet what to do with Coventry School. The library “is very happy that Artful has found funding to support themselves and their artists. We look forward to seeing their progress, and are glad they were able to stay in the Heights.”

In full disclosure, Artful’s lawyer for the St. Alban’s purchase was Lee Chilcote Jr., whose son, Lee III., founded The Land, and whose daughter, Katherine, runs Building Bridges Arts Collaborative, formerly a tenant at Coventry School.