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The congregation of the 1924, Gothic, St. Ignatius Loyola Church on the corner of 23^rd and York has spearheaded a grassroots restoration effort of their building. Demographically, the church followed the trends of the Whittier neighborhood in which it is located. It was a prominent middle class congregation having up to 1100 families in 1940. After many people moved to the suburbs in the 1950s, Loyola became one of the first integrated Catholic Parishes. Today there are approximately 310 families registered at the church, of which 68% are African American and 8% are Hispanic. As the building needed maintenance and repairs over the years, the congregation did not have the funds to provide the service. In a sense, they felt guilty spending their money on the physical condition of the church when their resources were needed for their school and community outreach programs.

By 1994, the building needed maintenance so desperately it became a crisis situation. The parking lot was falling apart, the front steps were in urgent need of repair, and the roof was failing, in addition to many other problems. The church needed to hire an expert to tell them exactly what was wrong with the building. They discovered they could apply to the Colorado Historical Society’s State Historical Fund for a mini grant for a structural assessment. Two weeks before the deadline, a group of congregants tackled writing the grant application, some nights working until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. Their hard work proved worthwhile as the Historical Society awarded them their first grant toward the preservation of the building. The architectural firm of Slater-Paull and Associates, Inc. created a comprehensive ten year plan for the restoration, prioritizing issues that needed to be addressed.

In order to qualify for additional preservation grants from the State Historical Fund, the church needed to become historically designated. Designation required a detailed history of the building. The congregants discovered the church had no historic records. So, they asked the parish for help researching the history required for the designation application. The volunteers split into seven small groups each with a specific area of research to tackle. Once they compiled their findings, they applied for both National and State designation and received both.

The church was ready to apply to the State Historic Fund to begin the restoration work. The Fund awarded the church $100,000, with a cash match and in-kind match required, toward repair of the front of the church, roof and towers. While the exterior repairs were underway, parishioners began working on restoring the hall in the basement of the church in order to make the hall an appropriate place to hold events. Volunteers cleaned out the storage space and knocked down dividing walls. The organization, if they would be willing to assist them, telling them they did not have any money. The firm agreed that if volunteers prepared the area to be painted they would donate the paint and a professional painter for one day. Seventy-five parishioners worked from the crack of dawn to 9:30 at night preparing the building. They asked every congregant to help: if they were too disabled or elderly to assist in the labor they could make food or just come and provide encouragement.

The company who originally installed the hardwood floor, Hillyard Floor Care Supply, was still in business. Due to the historic connection the company had with the church, the current owner agreed to teach the congregants how to restore the floor and donated the machinery. Volunteers arrived every night for three months to work on the floor. They tracked all of their time in order to make the in-kind contribution match for the State Historic Fund grant. At the same time, a kitchen was put in the basement so the church could offer a functioning hall for events.

The church still had to raise a cash match for the State Historic Fund. Their big fundraising event, "Come Home to Loyola", celebrated their 72^nd anniversary, inviting anyone ever associated with the parish to join. Over 1000 people came to the celebration.

In addition, the congregation encouraged younger people to become more involved with the church by having a kids’ learning day. They allowed children into the passageways, into the towers and to places where they could see the pencil marks that made the stencil of the exquisite interior trompe l’oeil.

The efforts of the congregation to restore the body of their church was a reenergizing effort in the neighborhood and the church has once again become an anchor structure in the urban neighborhood of Whittier in Denver.