The building which houses Sacred Heart Seminary and School of Theology and Sacred Heart Monastery is an iconic landmark in the Hales Corners / Franklin area. Its unique design is the work of Henry Slaby, an architect who specialized in designing buildings for religious communities. Recently, it has become the focus of study of an Architectural Historian and Cultural Resource Manager from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee.
“I became interested in the work of Henry Slaby because of Sacred Heart’s distinctive style,” said Justin Miller (pictured above in the Province Archives), who was first introduced to Slaby through a project funded by the City of Milwaukee Historic Preservation Commission. Miller is now preparing a profile on the building for a book commissioned by Docomomo Wisconsin that will feature two dozen Modernist buildings, including Sacred Heart.
Sacred Heart was the second design that Slaby did for the Priests of the Sacred Heart. He also designed Kilroe Seminary in Honesdale, PA, which was built about a dozen years before the Hales Corners structure.
One of Miller’s favorite features in Sacred Heart’s design “is the use of repeated angles and triangular forms in the chapel,” he said. “They keep recurring on the exterior and interior, and they’re arranged in such precise and satisfying ways from the obvious, like the shape of the angled arches and the ‘folded plate’ ceiling, to the subtle, like the uplights in the chapel and the chevron-patterned diamonds around the base of the crown on the roof…
“Stewarding historic buildings can be tough sometimes, and I’m so happy to see that Sacred Heart is well loved and cared for,” he added.
Click here to read more on the province website.
