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Spirit endures as seminary closesChanging times are closing the doors of St.Gregory College Seminary in Mt. Washington.“This is something we couldn’t have forseen 20 years ago just' as no one forsaw the energy crisis,’’ Father Donald Tenoever said of the seminary’s declining enrollment.Eighteen years ago when Father Tenoever started teaching at the seminary, there were about 350 students studying to become priests. Today’s enrollment is 48. The seminary will close at the end of this academic yearWhat will happen to the magnificent granite and sandstone structure and 40 acre campus is still being debated... A private research firm, .has been hired to study the seminary’s future.Although fewer feet tread the marble halls these days, the seminary is still an impressive place. The steeple of the old central building, circa 1892, stands undaunted in the spring wind. The building itself is still used as a residence hall for faculty.The main building, built of granite and sandstone, is dominated by graceful columns, archways and a colored tile roof. It is the last example of Romanesque Revival architecture built in Cincinnati. Beech trees that gave the street in front of the seminary its name still shade the lawn as do sturdy cedars.Three gardens grace the grounds. One garden contains the Stations of the Cross done in bronze reliefs by a German artist in the late 1920s. A statue of St. Gregory the Great, patron of the order, stands in the center of a small pool inanother garden. Evergreens and flowering treessurround a statue of the Virgin Mary in the third garden.Inside the foyer, two famous paintings hang on .salmon-colored walls. The Liberation of St. Peter by the Spanish artist Juan de Roellas is the only large painting by that artist that is hanging outside of Spain.Benjamin Hay don’s painting of Christ entering Jerusalem also hangs in the foyer. This is one of the most copied paintings in the world, Father Tenoever noted, 'because the artist used the likenesses of close friends like Wordsworth, Yeats and Shelley for faces in the painting..Salmon and emerald-hued quarter sawn marble floors lead into the chapel. A reredos, or alter screen, carved by August Schmidt of Germany focuses attention on the alter. The mahogany reredos weighs, four tons and depicts various apostles, prophets and saints in almost life-sized statues.Paintings and sculptures add to the beauty of the building. The seminary also boasts five mosiacs from the Vatican, the largest number of Vatican mosiacs in the United States.More classrooms stand empty these days as enrollment drops but the students who remain are actively involved in their studies and seminary life. Plans are currently underway to product “The Tempest ”, which was also the first play the seminarians produced in 1942 when a Shakespeare revival started there.True art always endures.PHOTOGRAPHS BYBRIAN MacCONNELL TEXT BY CHERYL BAUER
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CA 11 May 2025
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