Munger Place United Methodist Church is feeling every bit of its 84 years, but once you pass through its lofty doors, it seems simple to forgive the sanctuary’s ailments — among them a leaky roof, a lack of heating and air, a shifting foundation and a dwindling congregation.
Inside, a heavenly historical vibe hits, powered by a dozen breathtaking stained glass images. For decades the windows depicting Jesus and each apostle in striking hue and detail have hovered angelically over the sanctuary, a source of pride and mystery for the church’s members and secular neighbors alike.
“From the mid-1920s stained glass windows at Munger Place Church have added their beauty for all to see,” a church information pamphlet leads off. “For many years the historical background of the windows remained unknown in spite of efforts to learn more about them, but then a premier stained glass artisan in the city was called on to help,” it reads.
That artisan was the well-respected John Kebrle. When Munger Place commissioned Kebrle to study the windows in 1997, he assessed, based on the design, texture and pigments, that they were the work of designers from the Jacoby Glass Studios of St. Louis. The appraisal surprised some longtime East Dallas residents, who believed the windows had been the work of local stained glass artisan Roger McIntosh, who died in 1977.
For years when McIntosh was alive, everyone attributed the windows to him, and he wasn’t the type of guy to take credit for something he didn’t do, says Terri Raith, a Realtor and artist who purchased and moved into McIntosh’s historical East Dallas home five years ago. But who was she, or anyone else around here for that matter, to question one of Dallas’ foremost stained glass experts?
Former Munger Place church historian Carolyn Harmon, who is familiar with other McIntosh designs, also doubted Kebrle’s analysis.
“When you see the artwork on the windows in [McIntosh’s former] house and “The Apostles” at Munger Place, you can tell it was [by] the same person,” Harmon says.
Despite initial uncertainty, over the past decade Kebrle’s assessment has been widely accepted, and the Munger Place windows became known as those “magnificent”, “stunning” or “precious Jacoby stained glass windows”.
But now it looks as if the church might need to publish an updated pamphlet. Raith has evidence — awe-inspiring evidence, in fact — that Kebrle’s appraisal was wrong. Even Kebrle himself admits that if Raith’s findings are legit, they “blow [his] theory out of the water.”
The findings certainly look legit.
The crumbling scrolls sit atop a bed in an upstairs room, their ends secured underneath a quarter-inch slab of Sheetrock. As Raith unrolls the corner of the topmost drawing, crumbs of ivory paper fall about the mattress and floor.
“You can barely open them without breaking them,” she says, as she slowly, carefully reveals the meticulous sketch of Jesus Christ, undoubtedly the same Christ in the glass at Munger Place Church. “I found Jesus,” Raith boasts with a mischievous grin. Underneath Jesus lay intricate sketches of each of the 12 apostles that appear identical to the Munger Place Apostles, save the color.
Roger McIntosh was known around Dallas in the early 1900s as a superb craftsman of glass, wood and metal, and a terrible speller, Raith says. “You see, he dropped out of school when he was just 11 or 12, and started working at Dallas Art Glass Company when he was 15.” He made his home, which he nicknamed “The Shack”, at 5918 Tremont in the Junius Heights neighborhood. He, his wife, and his widowed mother lived there until their respective deaths. Raith became fascinated with McIntosh’s history after visiting The Shack, a home she first encountered on a Preservation Dallas historical site tour in 2004. It was in disrepair, yet undeniably charming — and it was on the market.
“It needed saving,” Raith says. “And at the time, I needed saving, too.” In most ways it remains just as McIntosh left it — museum-esque with the feel of a tiny cottage lovingly expanded and adorned over the years. Dozens of stained glass windows, a workroom full of McIntosh’s tools, and black-and-white photos of the artist and his wife, Georgia Jensen McIntosh, are positioned on shelves and tables, telling the story of the couple who once lived there. After buying The Shack, Raith went to work fixing the more “worn out” areas of the home, including the roof. Workers discovered the large cache of 50-plus year old charcoal sketches, called “cartoons,” in the far corner of the attic that winter during renovations.
“Written on top of one bundle was ‘Cartoons A-p-p-o-s-s-e-l-s Munger Place United Methodist Church’. I told you, McIntosh was not a good speller.” Raith carefully carried the full-scale renderings down to the bedroom, where they will remain until she decides exactly what to do with them. “I’d like to see them go to Munger Place at some point,” she says, adding that it’s most important to her that they are appreciated and preserved.
Also discovered in the attic was McIntosh’s original sketch for the massive stained glass window at the historic Dallas Power and Light building in Downtown Dallas. (McIntosh is also renowned for his abundant stained glass windows inside Oak Cliff’s Tyler Street United Methodist Church.)
Raith feels a connection to her home’s former inhabitants, and has spent the last few years researching McIntosh’s life, about which she someday hopes to write a book. She learned that McIntosh’s wife had been a talented painter — information that comes in handy when piecing together the mystery of “The Appossels”.
Kebrle, who met McIntosh while he was alive, says his dismissal of McIntosh as the Munger Place stained glass artist was partially based on his own knowledge of McIntosh and his work. “Roger McIntosh was a master of glasswork, but wasn’t really a painter — that was not one of his strengths,” Kebrle says.
Harmon says that can easily be explained. “Actually, it was McIntosh’s wife Georgia who did the painting,” she says.
Kebrle reported that due to a fire, there are no available records from Jacoby Glass for the period of time in question. While Raith respects Kebrle’s expertise, she thought that it was unfair for him to conjecture, with no real evidence, that someone other than McIntosh did the Munger Place glass.
“I am not out to discredit Kebrle,” she says, “but I do want history to be clarified, verified and set straight for future generations of Dallas.”
