St. Philip’s in the Hills Episcopal Church has won a $150,000 grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Fund for Sacred Spaces program.
The church plans to use the grant for preservation work on the building’s exterior and structure, the National Trust for Historic Preservation announced in a news release.
“This funding will support essential repairs to the sanctuary’s primary facade, which is arguably the most prominent example of work by the renowned Tucson architect, Josias Joesler,” St. Philip’s said in an Oct. 21 Facebook post.
St. Philip’s in the Hills Episcopal Church
The church at 4440 N. Campbell Ave. was built in 1936 — holding its first service on Christmas Eve that year — “in the style of Spanish Colonial architecture, also called Neo-Mission,” similar to the Franciscan mission churches built in California more than 400 years ago, St. Philip’s says on its website. The church is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Architect Joesler, born in 1895 in Zurich, Switzerland, moved to Tucson in 1927 and lived and worked here, often designing in Spanish Colonial Revival and Pueblo Revival styles, until his death in 1956.
The grant is part of $8.7 million in assistance awarded in this funding cycle to 30 historic and architecturally significant faith communities across the country, the trust said.
This is the second grant the program has awarded to an Arizona congregation since it launched in 2016, following a 2018 grant to San Xavier del Bac Mission in Tucson, the news release said.
