Christ in Blessing, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Studios stained-glass window, is now on display in the entrance of the redeveloped Central United Methodist Church, overlooking the protected Robert Ball Sr. Family Burial Ground in Ballston.
Nearly 23 years after its salvage from the Abbey Mausoleum in Arlington and approximately 90 years since its original fabrication, Christ in Blessing is the last of 13 stained-glass windows to be restored and placed in the church. The church is part of the new United Homes project in Ballston, a collaborative effort of the church and Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing that also includes 144 committed-affordable apartments, a daycare facility and commercial kitchen.
Washington Art Glass Studio LLC (WAGS) led the preservation process.
“The restoration of this final piece from the Abbey Mausoleum collection exemplifies the importance of partnerships across county-government departments and with the private sector,” said Cynthia Liccese-Torres of the Arlington County government’s historic-preservation office. “This artifact presented an extreme challenge to find a suitable reuse, given its large size, religious symbolism and level of restoration needed.”
The 9-by-6-foot leaded-glass window, dating to the mid-1930s, consists of 12 panels of single-layer French or German antique mouth-blown glass, matted, painted and fired with silver stain highlights. Approximately 35 percent of the original glass in the window was missing or damaged.
Eleven other original stained-glass windows were salvaged in September 2021 from the century-old Central United Methodist Church building prior to its demolition. They were restored by WAGS and are now featured in the new church sanctuary.
Built on a hillside overlooking Arlington National Cemetery and the Potomac River in 1924, the Abbey Mausoleum was once a grand final resting place for some of the local region’s elite. The mausoleum, built by the U.S. Mausoleum Co. from 1924 to 1926, was an impressive Romanesque-style structure that neighbored Arlington National Cemetery.
In the 1950s, the company managing the mausoleum went bankrupt, and the structure later was demolished by the U.S. Navy, which gained ownership of the site in 2000. The Arlington County government was given the opportunity to salvage architectural features from the historic building, including the Tiffany windows.
Those salvaged windows have found their way to a number of local venues, including Westover Library, Fairlington Community Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington.
