Former altar boy buys old Christ the King Catholic Church in Akron

The pews are empty but the old church is full of memories.

Joe Breiding’s footsteps echoed as he walked down an aisle at the former Christ the King Catholic Church on Creighton Avenue in North Akron.

“So Grandpa and Grandma were here,” the 52-year-old businessman recalled as he patted the back of a wooden row on the right side. “And the second pew from there, that’s where we grew up.”

Dick and Elizabeth Breiding and their 12 children — Kathy, Tim, Bill, Winnie, Liz, Pete, Chris, Bridget, Tom, Mary, Joe and Ann — usually sat in one pew together until the older kids matured into young adults.

“Then one pew couldn’t hold us,” he said.

The family lived across the street from the church where Breiding was baptized, attended school, served as an altar boy and got married.

“We lived here,” Breiding said of Christ the King. “I mean, this was a part of our family. It just wasn’t a parish. It was a family, too.”

And now he owns the place.

He and business partner James Ready recently purchased the 9½-acre site from the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland for an undisclosed price through Hoff & Leigh realty in Fairlawn. The property includes the church, rectory, school building and two ballfields. 

The church building has stood vacant since Christ the King closed in November 2009, joining St. Martha and St. Hedwig in the formation of the new Blessed Trinity Parish on East Tallmadge Avenue. Before the church was sold, all items considered sacred, including the altar, statues and stained-glass windows, were removed. The former Christ the King School, adjacent to the church, has served for seven years as the home of the Steel Academy, a charter school.

Breiding paid a visit to the church last week to reminisce about the past and talk about the future of the property.

“This neighborhood was my life,” he said.

Origin of the church

Founded in 1935 with a Croatian congregation, Christ the King originally was located at 759 Grant St. in Akron but had to vacate its property in the late 1950s to make way for construction of the west leg of the Akron Expressway.

Breiding’s grandfather Leonard Breiding, the church’s attorney, offered the congregation nearly 10 acres on Creighton Avenue between Home Avenue and Brittain Road. He and his brothers William, Henry, Lawrence and Joseph Breiding had grown up on a farm that encompassed most of the land between present-day Tallmadge Avenue and Independence Avenue.

Back then, the area was called North Hill or North Akron, but the city has since renamed the neighborhood as Chapel Hill. Breiding Road, one block east of Creighton, is named for the family.

The congregation broke ground in June 1958 on the $300,000 church (about $2.7 million in today’s money). The Rev. Nicholas P. Novosel designed the church and rectory with assistance from Joseph Morbito, founder of Kent State University’s architecture program.

Plans called for a 745-seat sanctuary with a 62-foot bell tower surmounted by a 22-foot, stainless-steel cross. On the front of the church would be a 20-by-6-foot mosaic of Christ the King. Many of the materials for the church would be imported from Italy, including stained glass and marble. A social hall in the basement would have seating for 850. A convent and school also were planned.

Auxiliary Bishop John Krol celebrated the first Mass at the church on Nov. 8, 1959, followed by a parish banquet.

Leonard Breiding didn’t just secure a church for the neighborhood. He made sure that his children and their descendants would have homes.

“So he gave my dad a lot,” Breiding said. “He gave my two uncles a lot. And he gave my aunt a lot. So we all had lots right there to go to a Catholic church and a Catholic school.”

School opened in 1960

Christ the King School, staffed by the Daughters of Divine Charity, opened Sept. 9, 1960. Serving children in kindergarten through eighth grade, it originally was housed in the social hall until 1963 when the church brought in seven white trailers to serve as mobile classrooms. The library, audiovisual room, religion mini-center, faculty room and principal’s office were housed in the convent.

Ground wasn’t broken on a permanent school building and gymnasium until 1987.

“Basically this entire neighborhood went to school here,” Breiding said.

So many families on the street were parishioners at Christ the King. Their last names included Stott, Kraszewski, Dobersztyn, Rinaldi, Biltz, Hirnikl, Rich, Krukemeyer, Brown, Hoza, Ritty, Davis, Leone, Schulz, Tomin, Germeister, Borek, Horvat, Mancino, Jager, Ganz, Denker and LaJudice.

Walking through the empty church, memories came flooding back.

“You visualize,” Breiding said. “You see them back in the pews.”

His dad was president of the Holy Name Society and his mother was president of the Altar Society. As altar boys who lived across the street, the Breiding kids often were called to help with church services.

“I served thousands of Masses and funerals and weddings,” he said.

He and his wife, Michelle, will celebrate their 25th anniversary this year. They were married at Christ the King in 1996, and have three children: Kate, Claire and Ben.

Breiding said he has thousands of childhood stories about the church. He remembers when he and his siblings used to get the giggles during Mass, how his father called bingo games, how neighborhood ladies cared for an outdoor statue of St. Jude, how Sister Agnes refused to let any children get near the church organ in the balcony.

“Growing up, you never were allowed to play the organ,” he said. “So when I bought it, my mission was to figure out how to turn on the organ. And I figured it out.”

Sorry, Sister Agnes.

He’s still trying to get the church bells to work. Since the building has been vacant for a while, the wiring may have disconnected. If neighbors hear ringing for the first time in more than a decade, they’ll know that he figured it out.

Breiding, an accountant who lives in Tallmadge, said he bought the property as a business investment, but with all the family history, it has deep sentimental value, too. He is general manager and chief financial officer for Ready Field Solutions LLC, and has been involved in development and construction for more than 20 years.

“I know how to look at a property, how to get financing for it, how to turn it around and generate income from it,” he said.

The school building and gymnasium will continue as the Steel Academy for students in sixth through 12th grade. The community school has 121 students and hopes to grow to 150, Principal Troy Powell said. Founder Angel Lawrie built the nonprofit program around pupils playing steel drums, and on a recent afternoon, the joyful sound of Caribbean music filled a classroom.

Plans for the future

Breiding and his business partner hope to renovate and lease the church building to a new congregation and plan to market the rectory as professional offices. The convent was torn down long ago.

Should no congregation step forward to lease the church, Breiding has an idea.

“If we don’t get play on it as a church, we’re really strongly looking at turning it into an athletic facility,” Breiding said.

The open floor plan and 28-foot ceilings would be ideal for volleyball, a baseball academy and other athletic training, he said.

But first it would need to be cleaned out.

Upstairs and downstairs, the church is filled with pews, tables, folding chairs, bookcases, partitions, lockers, ladders, bingo boards, books, kitchen equipment and a lot of miscellaneous items, including a drum kit.

“We’re going to market it just like it is in case anybody wants any of this stuff,” he said. “There’s no reason to get rid of it if someone wants it.”

This investment was more than a business transaction. It was personal.

“I went to school there,” he said. “I was baptized there. I got married there.”

The property has come full circle with Breiding purchasing the land that his grandfather once owned.

“I still know a lot of neighbors and they were all worried about who was going to buy it,” he said. “So they know that I’ll make sure that it’s still taken care of.”

The former altar boy has returned to serve Christ the King.

Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com.