PARISH HISTORY
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History of St. Nicholas and St. William Parish, Los Altos
I. St. Nicholas Parish: from outpost to anchor
Long before there was a town called Los Altos, Catholic life in the foothills was tied to Mission Santa Clara de Asís, founded by the Franciscans in 1777 and later entrusted to the Jesuits in the mid-nineteenth century. That mission became the spiritual center for scattered ranchos and orchards that would one day become Los Altos and Los Altos Hills.
The landscape itself carried the story. Much of today’s Los Altos Hills sat within Rancho La Purísima Concepción, a Mexican land grant made in 1840 to Ohlone landholders José Gorgonio and José Ramón; a few years later, the property was purchased by Juana Briones, a pioneering Latina landowner. Those rancho-era ties survive in local place-names and in the memory of a community that grew up along the old El Camino Real.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the area’s
Catholics were served from St. Joseph Parish in Mountain View (est. 1901). As the name “Los Altos” appeared on maps and homesteads multiplied, the distance to Mountain View began to become a real barrier. In 1929, Fr. Galvan of St. Joseph experimented with parish buses to bring families to Mass. That trial was short-lived, and Los Altos Catholics pivoted to renting space for worship—first the Boy Scouts’ Hall (1937–41), then the American Legion Hall (1941–42)—while the Holy Family Sisters, with laywomen Celia Petar and Sarah Wright, began catechism classes for local children. 
What came next was pure community initiative. In 1940, a circle of Catholic women organized to build a church. Their effort rallied donors, notably the Marini family of San Francisco. Frank Marini and his five sisters purchased the preferred site, deeded it to the Archdiocese, and underwrote construction “in memory of papa and mama,” a vision Frank credited to his sister Mabel. World War II slowed supplies and labor, but work began in March 1942; Archbishop John J. Mitty blessed the cornerstone that October, and the church opened that December. It remained a mission of St. Joseph until 1947, when it was erected as St. Nicholas Parish. 
The new parish’s first pastor, Monsignor (then Rev.) Stanley Reilly brought a striking biography: San Francisco native, ordained in 1930, and a U.S. Army chaplain for 15 years who survived captivity after the fall of Bataan. Under Fr. Reilly, the rectory rose (1948); the parish grew from roughly 250 families to well over 600 within a few years, reflecting post-war population growth across the valley.
Education quickly became the parish’s hallmark. In 1953, St. Nicholas School opened at Rosita and Campbell with Dominican Sisters teaching the first four grades; a first graduating class followed in 1957. Anticipating further growth, the parish secured property on El Monte Avenue for eventual school expansion. As needs outpaced the original church’s capacity, the Archdiocese divided the territory: the school, convent, and hall became part of a new parish, St. William, while St. Nicholas retained the church and El Monte properties.
A new chapter began in 1959 with Fr. Richard Meade—another former military chaplain and a paratrooper—who oversaw a school gym and later a convent at the El Monte campus. The school took shape there beginning in 1961 under the Sisters of Mercy (Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary); its first class graduated in 1967. The El Monte campus remains the school’s home today.
Why St. Nicholas mattered to Los Altos: Its story traces the region’s transition from mission outposts and ranchos to a post-war town (incorporated in 1952) whose population boomed through the 1950s–60s, replacing orchards and rail spurs with neighborhoods and expressways. Parish milestones march in step with that civic arc.II. St. William Parish: born of growth, built for community
By the late 1950s, the Catholic population in Los Altos had outgrown a single parish. In 1959, the Archdiocese created St. William Parish, assigning it the Rosita Avenue school site and directing that Masses be celebrated in the school hall while plans for a church progressed. Priests lived in a rectory on nearby Arboleda Drive.
Father Glenn Kelly, St. William’s first pastor, shepherded the construction of the parish church at 611 S. El Monte Avenue. The new church was dedicated on October 19, 1969, giving the community its permanent home; a rectory with offices followed in 1979. In the decades that followed, St. William remained a lively center of worship and parish life even as the school eventually closed in 1990 and the site was later sold to fund the St. William parish hall, dedicated in 2003.
St. William’s footprint and scheduling anchored the southern side of town. Today, the campus at 611 S. El Monte continues to host Sunday liturgies for the combined parish, complementing St. Nicholas’s historic church at 473 Lincoln Avenue.
Context: The creation of St. William fits a broader Bay Area story. Post-war housing tracts, new schools, and the shift from rail (Southern Pacific ceased Los Altos service in 1964) to roads (Foothill Expressway) redrew neighborhood lines and parish boundaries alike.
III. One parish, two churches: the 2018 merger
On July 1, 2018, after consultation with clergy and laity, Bishop Patrick J. McGrath decreed the canonical merger of St. Nicholas and St. William aeque principaliter—“on equal footing”—to form the Saint Nicholas and Saint William Catholic Parish. The merged parish retained both worship sites and ministries, recognizing that the community’s strength is doubled, not reduced, by its twin heritage. Anniversary notes and parish bulletins since then have reiterated the same theme: two histories, one mission.
Throughlines across the decades- Mission DNA: From Mission Santa Clara’s Franciscan/Jesuit legacy to the valley’s ranchos, the parish stands on centuries of Catholic presence in the South Bay.
- Lay leadership: The 1940 Los Altos Catholic Women’s Club and the Marini family’s philanthropy turned a dream chapel into a church within months—despite wartime shortages.
- Religious orders: Dominican Sisters (Rosita campus), Sisters of Mercy (El Monte), and the Holy Family Sisters (catechesis) shaped generations of faith formation.
- Catholic education: The move from Rosita to El Monte in 1961 led to the establishment of St. Nicholas School, where it still serves families today.
- Growth and stewardship: From 250 families debt-free in the late 1940s to a thriving multi-site ministry, the parish has navigated expansion with care for people and place.
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SAINT NICHOLAS CHURCH
GUILDING PROJECT - 2025The gilding project in St Nicholas Church is a “Restoration” project. It helps restore the original look and feel of the church as designed and built in 1942. It is consistent with the original design intent of the Architect, Andrew Knoll, the patrons, the Frank Marini family, and the Archbishop of San Francisco, Most Rev. John Joseph Mitty.In the year 1942, it must have been a particularly challenging time to build a church, especially with this high level of design quality, material, and craftsmanship. With the country’s focus on the war, it is remarkable to imagine that such an effort was undertaken when many other important projects were cancelled or put on hold.With that in mind, the project builders must have been very deliberate in their decision-making.As an architect with experience working on many historic landmark buildings, I often recognize similarities in materials, designs, details, and techniques to those of buildings from the pre-WW2 vintage.When our family moved to Los Altos in 1970, my parents told us “kids” the reason they chose our house on West Edith Ave. was because it was in walking distance to a “cute little Spanish church.” St. Nicholas Church is where our family was raised. It was at the center of my parents’ lives. All their friends were St. Nicholas parishioners. Many of you probably remember Cathy and Jack as part of the “daily 8 am Mass gang.’ They were also choir members, sacristans, rummage sale organizers, Christmas & Easter decorators, lectors, and volunteers of all sorts.Getting back to the gilding project – I remember the “Reredos” or altar screen behind the altar crucifix as looking like gold in the 1970s and 80s. In fact, it was real gold leaf, either 22 or 24 carats. Over the years, the gold's brightness had darkened due to dirt, dust, and soot from the candles. I remember when one of my parents’ friends took on the project of re-painting the reredos to restore it. Not being a gilder, he chose “gold paint” instead. ‘Gold paint’ is regular paint with bronze metal pigment made to look like gold or bronze. It looks nothing like real gold leaf. Nothing against my parents’ friend. How was he to know?The altar reredos was not the only ornament originally decorated in metal leaf. The inset bas-relief precast plaster panels in the main altar arch and the side altar niches also had metal leaf. They used “Bronze Leaf,” aka “Dutch Metal,” in these locations for several reasons – cost savings, visual interest in metal variety, and less brightness to put more emphasis on the reredos, crucifix, and tabernacle.Initially, there were also incidental locations of metal leaf gilding - the three wood ceiling trusses (edge chamfers and flat surface stenciling), ceiling purlins (stenciling), and acanthus leaf ornament on the chandeliers and pendant lights. I’ve seen family pictures of baptisms in front of the St. Joseph alcove, where the gilded bas relief panel ornament is only slightly tarnished.The color of the gilded surfaces was intended to unite in appearance with the bronze Tabernacle as well as the bronze building hardware (door locks and hinges, closers, thresholds, window hardware, electrical switch and receptacle plates), and the copper sheet cladding of the main and side entrance doors, since painted over – another project!Our highly skilled and experienced gilding artisans, Julian and Anna Billotte of San Francisco have confirmed by observation the existence of the original gold leaf on the reredos and reredos frame, the use of “Dutch Metal” bronze leaf on the precast plaster ornament on the main altar arch and side alcoves, and the use of “yellow paint” on the ceiling trusses and purlins. Julian says the yellow paint would have been used in lieu of bronze leaf as a cost-saving measure, considering the scarcity of materials and the observable distance factor.Our church was built in a unique time period for other reasons as well. 1942 was the tail end of “pre-war.” Traditional architectural styles were still in vogue at the time. St. Nicholas Church is a hybrid of California Mission and Spanish Renaissance styles. Both styles used gilded ornaments. If our church were built post-war, chances are a new, more “modern” church would have been built, i.e., non-traditional, lacking in ornament and gilding of any kind.Architectural history shows there are very few rules for how much gilding is appropriate in Catholic churches. The quantity of gilding was a function of available funds. Some European churches I’ve seen have an abundance – they put it everywhere they could afford. Some have very little. I’ve seen Protestant churches with no gilding or ornament of any kind.St. Nicholas was designed by a very talented architect. The building shows a master’s touch. The church has a beautifully designed and proportioned nave and sanctuary. There’s just the correct number of ornamental elements and eye-catching gilding.There was a carefully thought-out logic to the gilding placement and extent for effect. Walking through the Narthex (aka vestibule) doors into the Nave, the attention is first attracted to the richly decorated ceiling. The stenciling on the wood structural members and “Tectum Board” acoustic ceiling panels, which are made to look like aged copper, is immediately noticeable. As one walks down the main aisle, the attention is on the sanctuary and the bright gold reredos serving as the backdrop and support of the crucifix and the tabernacle. Finally, the eye is attracted to the ornament of the main sanctuary proscenium arch and side alcoves with St. Joseph to the right and the Blessed Mother on the left.Why was gilding used in churches? What is its purpose? Gold emphasizes sacredness and “offering all glory and praise to God.” Gold is beautiful, rare, and expensive. Only the most talented, skilled, and experienced artisans can be trusted to create with it. It is bright colored, shiny, and eye-catching. It is an appropriate material choice to emphasize the importance and sacredness of the worship space. It emphasizes the importance of beauty. (As St. Thomas Aquinas wrote – beauty is one of the four “transcendentals.”)My brother Mike and sisters Bernie and Alicia wish to thank Father Matt, Lidia Fiandiero, Tim Butterbrodt, Miguel Polvos, and Michael Sternhagen for working with us on this long-anticipated project.Finally, many thanks to the parishioners for putting up with the daily Mass and adoration relocation. We hope you enjoy the new/old look!God Bless St. Nicholas Church-Andy MaloneyAugust 15, 2025