All Saints-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Montecito in June finished a two-year construction project renovating the 121-year-old church, ensuring that the building can withstand another 100 years and making it accessible to all parishioners.
“There are so many significant elements of this project, but my favorite is a value that a lot of the elements pointed toward — and that is full accessibility,” the Rev. Aimée Eyer-Delevett told Noozhawk. “Now this is a space where all are truly welcome, not only in what we say but how we practice.”
The All Saints-by-the-Sea sanctuary, at 83 Eucalyptus Lane, was built in 1900, and over the years the foundation had settled away so that “a pretty significant portion of the building” was no longer resting on the foundation, Eyer-Delevett said, adding that the bell tower was cracking and seismically unstable before the renovations.
“We thought, ‘Oh boy, this building was really standing up by prayer,’” she said.
Church representatives knew that they would need to launch a fundraising campaign to make the needed renovations, and asked the parish what other improvements they would like to see, Eyer-Delevett said.
The church identified various project elements and began to recruit leadership for fundraising and the construction project itself, she added.
The church hired Armstrong Associates to conduct the renovations, and All Saints-by-the-Sea found that the Armstrong team and its subcontractors “really had a devotion to this project and a historical appreciation for it,” Eyer-Delevett said. “They were able to handle the complexity of this project with incredible professionalism.”
The main project elements included seismically strengthening and rebuilding the bell tower and rest of the sanctuary, making the altar, choir areas and communion rail accessible to all parishioners, replacing the failing pipe organ with a world-class digital organ, improving lighting and acoustics, and building a memorial chapel with columbarium niches and memorial plaques.
The altar rail was redesigned and relocated so that there were no stairs to climb in order to access the rail, Eyer-Delevett said. The height of the main floor was lowered by 18 inches, and the elevation of the pulpit and lectern were adjusted downward, bringing the celebrants closer to the people but still preserving the line of sight.
Those specific improvements, Eyer-Delevett said, made a real and practical impact on July 4 when the church returned for in-person services for the first time since 2019.
“For the first time in our history, someone was able to come to the altar rail with a wheelchair or a walker,” Eyer-Delevett said. “This would not have been possible before.”
The old pipe organ was replaced with a first-of-its-kind digital organ that “fills every knick and cranny” of the room, Eyer-Delevett said.
“A pipe organ would kind of sound muffled by the time you got halfway to the back of the church. A digital organ has speakers throughout the building so it can be heard throughout every corner, and it’s magnificent,” she added.
A new loop system was installed beneath the pews so that hearing-impaired people can receive audio through their hearing aids, and lighting fixtures were replaced with LED lighting elements that diffuse light shining down and radiating out to make the written word more accessible, she said. A camera system also was installed that permits videotaping and livestreaming of services.
“The lighting and audiovisual improvements sound a little boring, but they really make the experience much more welcoming and inclusive of everybody,” Eyer-Delevett said.
The renovations also included a columbarium, or a place where the church can lay to rest the cremated remains of loved ones.
“What’s really beautiful to me about the columbarium is we celebrate our whole lives in the church, we bring our joys and sorrows there, our marriages are blessed there, our children are blessed there, and we mourn those we lose there,” Eyer-Delevett said. “There’s a completeness of having a columbarium in our sacred space in that the whole of our lives can be maintained in this space.”
Most of the original woodwork at the church had been preserved and restored through the remodel, and the stained glass windows underwent a process to restore them to their original condition.
Construction started in 2019 and was completed last month.
The entire renovation project cost about $11.6 million, which included a substantial amount to supplement the church’s investments to pay for maintenance of the new sanctuary, Eyer-Delevett said. The majority of the funding came from parishioners, and more than 250 households gave to the project, with hundreds of people involved from start to finish, she added.
“This is not anything that just a small handful of people did. This is something that a community of people did together,” Eyer-Delevett said. “It was an incredible group effort.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Jade Martinez-Pogue can be reached at jmartinez-pogue@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
