Museum idea may be blessing for old church

By Kathleen Ostrander - Sentinel correspondent

Beloit - Angels brought an early Christmas present to a group of Beloit residents trying to save a historic Catholic church from demolition.

St. Paul’s Church on Riverside Drive was built in 1914 and recognized in April as one of the city’s historic landmarks.

The building is slated for demolition, but some residents have proposed using it to house a one-of-a-kind museum for an internationally recognized collection of angels and angel memorabilia owned by Joyce and Lowell Berg of Beloit.

The Beloit City Council Monday unanimously backed an initial feasibility study for the museum.

“We were just absolutely thrilled,” Barbara Pellegrini, a member of the four-person citizen feasibility study team, said Tuesday.

“We were surprised because we thought we wouldn’t hear anything for another 30 days — until the council’s next meeting. This truly was a wonderful Christmas present.”

The feasibility study was the first step in establishing the museum. A site study committee will be appointed to determine the exact cost of the museum, which has been estimated as $286,00.

The committee also will look for funding sources, including grants, Pellegrini said.

She said she already has received call from people wanting to volunteer their labor, which will cut the original cost estimates, as well as calls from people volunteering landscaping and marketing skills.

“We are really excited about this. I have to say, ever since the diocese closed the church, we’ve been hoping to find something to do with it,” said Patricia Casucci, another member of the feasibility study team. The diocese closed the church in 1988.

St. Paul’s was established by the Catholic Diocese in 1913 to serve the needs of Italian-speaking immigrants in the city, but the historic building is in the middle of a planned park by Beloit 2000. Beloit 2000, a public-private development group, bought the church and wented it torn down to make was for Heritage Park on the river.

Citizens circulated petitions and won a temporary reprieve. Theyh were asking to develop a profitable option for the building that would fit into the Beloit 2000 development plan.

The Bergs suggested the church would be the logical place to display their renowned angel collection and create the world’s first angel museum. The collection had been featured in national and international publication and contains 10,928 artifacts.

Casucci and other study team members researched other museums, the potential tourist draw of the proposed angel museum, whether or not the museum fit into the Heritage Park theme and estimated costs.

“I like history, and I like to save lovely old buildings. I feel this museum idea will really boost tourism, and it is so near the downtown it would be logical people would be going there and it would boost business there,” Casucci said.

Beloit City Manager Daniel T. Kelley said he thought the feasibility team put together a very comprehensive, professional study of the idea.

Featured Tempo Road Trip

Another in our summer-long series of stories on places, characters and other curiosities in the Midwest.

By Patrice M. Jones - Tribune staff reporter

Beloit Wis. - Joyce Berg likes to say the angels saved the old St. Paul’s Catholic Church building from demolition.

Well, in fact, they did. At least indirectly.

The church closed in 1988, and the building changed hands a couple of times before former parishioners got wind of a redevelopment plan that meant tearing down St. Paul’s

Meanwhile, Berg, a longtime local resident, was looking for a way to establish a museum to house her massive collection of angel figurines. the church, she thought, would be perfect.

The church closed in 1988, and the building changed hands a couple of times before former parishioners got wind of a redevelopment plan that meant tearing down St. Paul’s

Meanwhile, Berg, a longtime local resident, was looking for a way to establish a museum to house her massive collection of angel figurines. the church, she thought, would be perfect.

Today, the Angel Museum, which espouses no religious ideology, includes more than 12,000 angels of all shapes and sizes, most of them displayed under the former church’s impressive stained-glass windows.

Ber, still a passionate collector, is a 75-year-old grandmother with cheeks as round as ripe peaches. She seems to have a story that accompanies every angel picked up in 30 years of road trips and vacations with her late husband, Lowell.

To say she enjoys her longtime hobby is an understatement: Berg has been known to wear feathery angel wings, her white halo, angel earrings and a choir-type white gown when special visitors drop by the museum. She says more than a few times that she is just an ordinary woman with an unusual calling.

“I don’t want to make myself out to be a saint or something,” says the former elementary school teacher with a little giggle, smoothing her robe. “I just love my angels. They make me  feel good.”

The angels - linked to dozens of countries and fashioned in almost every material imaginable - had pretty much taken over the Bergs’ home, lining the walls, hanging from the ceiling. The couple had even taken out windows and doorways to display them.

Word got around that the Bergs would occasionally let visitors in to see the collection, but when a tour operator called one day asking to bring a busload of folks by the couple decided they needed to find a better home for their little charges. Lo and behold, St. Paul’s was set for demolition. The Bergs quickly got together with former parishioners and other…