Taken apart and put back — the restorations of 1931, 1968 and 1988–91

1931 – 1991 · three campaigns

1931: The first thorough renovation of the church came in 1931, designed by the New York architect Wilfred E. Anthony, on the Basilica's history page's account. The record reached gives the campaign its designer and its year and little more; it stands at that size, as the first of the three campaigns the Basilica's own history enumerates.

The Vatican II renovation: The second campaign remade the sanctuary for the reformed liturgy. The tour dates the sanctuary renovation to 1968; the Basilica's history page spreads it across the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the two stand together as the campaign's span. Its documented moves: the high altar was retained but moved back; an ornate wooden freestanding altar was placed at the crossing; the choir stalls were removed to the Lady Chapel — the present altar of sacrifice, the tour adds, was later made from pews and choir stalls of the Lady Chapel, so the displaced wood of the old arrangement serves in the new one; Gregori's Stations of the Cross were taken down and put in storage; and in 1969 the altar rail was removed and the pulpit replaced with a shorter one. For some twenty years the church worshipped in the conciliar arrangement with its painted Stations in storage — the interior the Artists and Gregori entries describe was, for that span, partly invisible in its own building.

1988–91: The last major renovation — the tour's span is 1988 through 1991, and its word for it is "a thorough restoration"; the Basilica's history page dates its beginning to 1989; both stand. It was executed by Conrad Schmitt Studios of New Berlin, Wisconsin — the same studio that would regild the Dome a generation later, as the Notre Dame history records — and it deliberately reverted some of the 1968 changes, chief among them the return of Gregori's Stations from storage to their places. Its glass work was among the studio's largest single projects: 116 windows and over 1,200 panels conserved, the count that stands in the glass entry beside the forty-four large windows of the Press's measure. The original baptismal font, built in 1871, was restored in this era and moved to the entrance, where the tour begins with it. The church that emerged in 1991 — restored, in the rector's welcome words, "preserved, and renewed" — was the church John Paul II named a basilica the following January; the sequence is the record's, and it is printed without a causal claim: restoration completed, designation given.

Sources

1. University of Notre Dame — the Basilica's history page (basilica.nd.edu): the 1931 renovation under Wilfred E. Anthony; the Vatican II renovation of the late 1960s and early 1970s, its moves enumerated, the altar rail in 1969; the last major renovation begun 1989, by Conrad Schmitt Studios, reverting some earlier changes and returning the Stations; the glass conservation as one of the studio's largest single projects.
2. University of Notre Dame, Campus Ministry — Self-Guided Tour of the Basilica: the sanctuary renovated in 1968; the thorough restoration of 1988 through 1991 by Conrad Schmitt Studios; the altar of sacrifice made from the Lady Chapel's pews and choir stalls; the font of 1871 restored and moved to the entrance; the rector's welcome.
3. The Gregori entry in this section (bas-gregori) — the Stations' storage and return.