Discovering Stained Glass in New Orleans
How a Michigan widower found inspiration in the sacred glasswork of the Crescent City.
Text and images by Dale A. Carlson, guest contributor
June 26, 2026
Text and images by Dale A. Carlson, guest contributor
This article is adapted from Dale A. Carlson’s 2022 book Stained Glass New Orleans: A Field Guide, as well as from Carlson’s talk at the 2026 New Orleans Antiques Forum, “Discovering Stained Glass in New Orleans.” Carlson is an architectural historian and author based in Detroit, Michigan.
My late wife, Carolin Venegas Jones, introduced me to New Orleans over a four-day trip in October 2009. It was love at first sight. When she was diagnosed with a terminal case of glioblastoma in 2014 we spent a few months in our home state of Michigan, doing what we had to do in terms of treatment, and then we moved to New Orleans, to squeeze all the joy we could out of the short time she had left. Oh, the new world we discovered in those five short months! In the years since her passing I have spent a minimum of one month out of every year in the Crescent City, often more. Somewhere along the line I got inspired to find a way to help preserve some aspect of the city’s many dazzling cultural traditions.
In December 2019 I came to town again for a multimonth trip, determined to put this dream into motion. My plan was to sell photography of New Orleans on the streets and at fairs and markets throughout the city. In between selling opportunities, I spent most of my time walking the neighborhoods, camera in hand, adding to my portfolio of New Orleans architectural views and cityscapes. I took advantage of any opportunity that presented itself, and in early February 2020 I enjoyed the privilege of photographing the Chapel of the Holy Name of Jesus, also known as the Thomas J. Semmes Chapel, located inside Jesuit High School of New Orleans.
While shooting the remarkable stained glass windows of the chapel, I got the idea to create a guide to the stained glass of New Orleans, and soon it was my sole focus. Within a few short weeks, the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic would crush all future photography sales opportunities and keep me cooped up inside my 210-square-foot Marigny apartment for over three months straight, doing little more than shooting church windows by masked appointment and refining the images for use in my book.
After photographing and researching roughly 600 to 700 stained glass sites, I’ve learned that every installation presents a unique angle and story distinguishing it from all others. Cliché, I know, but profound in practice. Here are some of my favorites.
Chapel of the Holy Name of Jesus, Jesuit High School of New Orleans
4133 Banks St.
The interior decorations of the Semmes Memorial Chapel, including its Franz Mayer & Co. windows, were transplanted to their current location in the mid-1920s. They originally beautified the old Jesuit High School and College at Common & Baronne Streets, which was razed around 1925 to make room for Pere Marquette Tower. The extant Immaculate Conception Jesuit Church and its rectory were part of the same campus. Multiple paths of New Orleans history intersect within this intimate space. For me personally, so did inspiration and destiny.
This installation depicts Saints Stephen Pongrácz (1583–1619) and Melchior Grodziecki (1584–1619), Jesuit priests martyred in Hungary during the Protestant Reformation. Between them is St. Mark Križevčanin (1588–1619), a non-Jesuit Catholic priest at the cathedral of Košice. When a Calvinist uprising placed Košice under siege, the invading Protestant army sought to make an example of the two Jesuits. Križevčanin was given the choice to renounce his Catholicism and convert, but he refused. All three men were tortured and beheaded. At the time this window was made, in 1905, they had been only beatified, but Pope John Paul II canonized them in 1995. The palm frond held in each of their hands is a symbol of martyrdom.
![Photo of a mosaic-style stained glass window from Christ Church Chapel [Episcopal].](https://cdn.craft.cloud/97cd51c5-b816-4a93-aea9-fd7e2c5e47da/assets/2-Christ-Church-Cathedral-9-web.jpg?fit=cover&width=260&s=ka9WV0KPdSA9TP7RsElVALQxVT_-oXv9H2LMVqz_LHs)
Christ Church Chapel [Episcopal]
2919 St. Charles Ave.
Examples of glasswork designed by the Belcher Mosaic Glass Company of Newark, New Jersey, are uncommon. It is theorized by some historians (and disputed by others) that the dissolution of the corporation, circa 1897, was an outcome of their late-era, patented mosaic window fabrication process, believed to be toxic and likely to have induced lead poisoning in many of their laborers. At Christ Church Chapel in New Orleans, a 1940s remodeling of the interior resulted in their Belcher window being relegated to the choir rehearsal room, thereafter unseen by random droppers-in. I was lucky enough to meet an enthused parishioner who was eager to share this priceless embellishment with me.
St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church
631 State St.
No examination of New Orleans’s stained glass history is complete without consideration of the master Munich-style maker of St. Louis, Emil Frei (1869–1942). Emil Frei Art Glass Co. dominated the New Orleans market for fancy window installations from the early 1900s until around 1960. Descendants carry on their founder’s legacy and today operate out of Kirkwood, Missouri. Among the Frei windows here, all installed in 1922, is this depiction of St. Francis, the patron saint of animals, surrounded by woodland creatures, a lamb in his lap.
Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church (now Hotel Peter and Paul)
2317 Burgundy St.
Adaptive-reuse successes give wind to the sails of architectural preservationists worldwide. This Marigny church, rectory, and convent was thoughtfully converted into a hotel in 2018. A Flanagan & Biedenweg window installation, rare in the Deep South, graces the former church sanctuary, which now serves as the hotel’s event space. The output of this Chicago-based maker is far more commonly found in the American Midwest. Original side altars complement the windows, enhancing the 19th-century Catholic atmosphere.
Dibert Mausoleum at Metairie Cemetery
5100 Pontchartrain Blvd., Section 56
When you walk the grounds of Metairie Cemetery, push or pull upon a mausoleum door or two. You never know when you might find one unlocked. When I entered the Dibert Mausoleum in March 2020, I felt as if I might be the first person to do so since it was sealed around 1938, however unlikely that may be. Much later, Henri A. Gandolfo’s Metairie Cemetery: An Historical Memoir taught me that the window inside, a masterful scene of pastoral Louisiana, was designed by one Harry Eldredge Goodhue of Boston. He was the brother of Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, influential architect of the Nebraska State Capitol, the Los Angeles Central Library, and, near my suburban Detroit home, Christ Church Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. The great tragedy of private family mausoleums is the priceless art often locked within, rarely to be seen again. Here fate intervened in the form of dumb luck. Tragedy averted.
Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church
501 Holy Trinity Dr., Covington, LA
What happens when a stained glass installation needs to be relocated? In 2016, Attenhofer’s Stained Glass Studio of Metairie managed the transplant of several mid- to late 19th-century windows from St. Maurice Catholic Church (1857), formerly located in the Holy Cross neighborhood of Orleans Parish, to a new home on the North Shore. Over the course of the project, Attenhofer’s owner, Cynthia Courage, studied these panes as closely as anyone and, disappointingly, found no maker’s marks or corporate insignia upon them. As is often the case with such transplantation projects, the windows were completely disassembled, pane by pane, cleaned, touched up, and then relined with fresh lead-alloy framework, before reinstallation.
Learn More
Read about Dale A. Carlson’s session and more happening at the 2026 New Orleans Antiques Forum.
Material Belief: Objects of Faith, Spirit, and Tradition
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