St. Dominic’s Church

The first Dominican Priory in San Francisco was established in 1863 at Van Ness and Broadway, but the church as we know it now went through many different iterations throughout the century.

In 2003 Giampolini Courtney, as prime contractor, worked with owner representative and architectural and engineering consultants SGH, and began a multi-phase, multi-million dollar repair and restoration program for the church. All of the exterior terra cotta walls and interior cast stone walls were cleaned, and over 1,000 terra cotta blocks were replaced in kind with new matching terra cotta, as there was damage from rusting and during the expansion of structural steel and anchors buried within the wall.

Approximately 75 of the beautiful stained glass and masonry tracery window assemblies were addressed. The stained glass windows were originally created by two separate famous artists, Henry Connick and Max Ingrand. Coincidentally, it also took two art glass restoration studios to accomplish the restoration of the windows as the job was too large for either to handle alone on the required construction timeline.

The Church contracted directly with two well known stained glass studios to restore and rebuild the leaded glass windows. Giampolini Courtney coordinated the scaffolding access and participated in the window restoration work, assisting the art glass specialists with disassembly and rebuilding. While the glass was out and away for months being restored in the respective studios, the tracery frame assemblies were disassembled and rebuilt incorporating new stainless steel framing and new replacement terra cotta blocks to replace those damaged by rust-jacking and expansion of buried original structural steel and masonry anchors.

The project was completed in 2011.