This Art Deco Jesus Tower Was Built by America’s Most Infamous Priest
Father James Coughlin’s 30 million radio listeners funded this ornate tower in the 1930s, before he was cancelled for his pro-fascist, anti-semitic views
Royal Oak — There’s a busy intersection on Woodward Avenue in Royal Oak, with cars zipping by constantly, Detroit sprawling outward. Standing on the corner is a tall stone tower, unlike the rest of its surroundings.
Art Deco Jesus, known officially as the Charity Crucifixion Tower of the National Shrine of the Little Flower Basilica, is a fusion of Art Deco and early 20th-century Catholic aesthetics. As an architectural rarity, it stands on its own—yet its origin story, and controversial past, are just as fascinating as the carved stones.
In the 1920s, southeast Michigan was rapidly growing, and ethnic and religious conflicts were endemic among the new and settled populations. The construction of the original Catholic church building on this site prompted the local Ku Klux Klan chapter, known for their vehement anti-Catholicism, to burn a large cross on the front lawn.
Father James Coughlin, the parish priest, determined that, in response, the church should build a large stone crucifix tower on the site as a “cross that couldn’t burn.”
Coughlin, of course, was more than just the local priest. He broadcasted a radio show, the Golden Hour of the Little Flower. By that point in the early 1930s, his show reached an audience nationwide of over 30 million people.
He was one of the most famous and politically influential men in America. His reach, via the airwaves, was so powerful that figures like Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. criticized him as a demagogue.
Naturally, to raise the funds to build the tower, Father Coughlin turned to his devoted radio audience. They contributed generously, funding its entire construction in 1931.
The tower itself is opulent, and immaculately built for the time period. Constructed entirely of intricately carved Indiana limestone, it features incredible detailing and figurative work, stained glass, and an expansive stone plaza beneath.
It’s a pure example of art deco, which is rare to see in Catholic architecture from the time period. Strong, cutting lines in stone, angular forms and unapologetic presence signal wealth that was rare in the chaos of the depression.
After Coughlin’s listeners funded the tower, he placed his office and broadcasting studio at the top of it, right behind Jesus’s head. The Church building itself was built to match it, a few years later, replacing the original building on the site.
Father Coughlin continued broadcasting from atop the tower for the rest of his media career, but it proved short lived. His views, while popular with his audience in the early 1930s, eventually courted controversy and then outright scandal.
Initially a supporter of FDR and the New Deal, Coughlin rapidly became disillusioned after the 1932 election. He denounced Roosevelt, blamed the American finance and banking sector for the country’s malaise, and promoted anti-Semitism in his broadcasts.
He vehemently opposed communism and capitalism alike, promoting what he called a Catholic “social justice” movement. As the 1930s progressed, he praised the fascists in Italy, supported the nationalists in Spain, and spoke highly of Nazi Germany.
All of this was enough to land him on an FBI watch list, even before he became directly involved in politics. He first started his own party, the National Union for Social Justice, and later threw his support behind third-party challenger William Lemke in the 1936 presidential election.
His political support proved less effective than his airwave audience might have indicated, with none of his favored candidates winning elections. With the onset of the war, public opinion shifted, and his ideas and prior support of Nazi Germany became scandalous and untenable.
Federal agents raided his offices in 1942, seizing all of his records, and those of the parish. The Archbishop of Detroit, responsible for Coughlin, ordered him to cease broadcasting and confined his duties to those of an ordinary parish priest for the rest of his life.
Father Coughlin left the airwaves and mostly vanished from cultural memory. The tower he built remains, though few know its history.
In the end, that’s probably what all those listeners who donated money for the tower wanted anyways. For the chaos of their own time to be forgotten, transmuted into a towering symbol of their faith. One constructed with the finest materials available, in the most elaborate aesthetic style of their era, and left for posterity to reckon with on its own merits.
