Church of the Crossroads was the recipient of a Freeman Grant in 2014 catalyzing a three phase campus-wide roofing project which was recently completed.
The Church:
Church of the Crossroads was founded in 1923 by students of the Mid-Pacific Institute and of McKinley High School as Hawaii’s first interracial congregation. From inception, the church has emphasized community interaction, been multi-racial and attempted to eliminate distinctions between members and non-members.* It’s listed on both the State and National Registers of Historic Places and is significant for its association with the twentieth century social history of Honolulu and as an example of the work of Claude Stiehl, master architect. Click here to learn more.
The Project:
The grant was used to re-roof the sloping roofs of three historic buildings and the covered walkway, or loggia, that links them together around the main courtyard of the Church of the Crossroads campus. The existing cedar shingle roofing needed to be replaced, and the cost of replacing it with the same historically-appropriate material too high for the church to do by itself. The work was done by a well-qualified and conscientious contractor using the proper specifications, both for the materials and their installation, for long-life expectancy for the new roof.
The Goal:
To protect the structural and historic integrity of an architecturally and socially significant set of buildings and do so in keeping with the visual appearance of the historic cedar shingle roof as viewed from the ground inside and outside the property. The roof needed to be repairable, resistant to too much heat gain and strong enough to resist being swept away by wind.
*Noted from National Register of Historic Places nomination form.
The initial grant inspired the congregation to move forward with the full three-phase project as noted below by Richard Tillotson of Church of the Crossroads:
Members of the Church of the Crossroads congregation proudly posed in front of their new rood on Weaver Hall.
December 5, 2017
Dear Kiersten,
I thought you would be interested in seeing this photo of the new roof on Weaver Hall at Church of the Crossroads. It’s the final building in the third phase of the campus-wide, re-roofing project we began some four or five years ago.
All the buildings on campus now have new roofs with historically appropriate cedar shingles consistent with the church’s status on the National Registry of Historic Places. It was the $50,000 grant from the Freeman Foundation, administered by the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation, that got all this started.
Even before then, it was the conversations we had with you which gave us the idea of dividing the project into phases, focusing each phase on buildings with a specific mission. This was crucial for our fundraising process.
Ultimately, more than half of the campus-wide cost for the roofs – approximately $320,000 – was paid for with church member donations and bequests, but it was the HHF grant that got us started and got us started in the right direction at a time when we really needed the encouragement.
Mahalo! And best wishes for the Holidays,
Richard Tillotson
