What is Going on in Our Parish

The Society to Preserve the Millvale Murals of Maxo Vanka (SPMMMV) provides current St. Nicholas Parishioners free admission to public tours. Please contact the Parish House at 412-231-2994 ext????????? for the code available exclusively to members of the St. Nicholas congregation.

You may know the stories behind the murals, or rusty on one or two but what about sharing them with out-of-town family members that are visiting or neighbors and friends?  The new Immigration Tour runs at 12:30PM on the last Saturday of the month and may hold meaning for you and your family. Think about joining a Public Tour.

Tour the Murals

About the Tour: Experience a guided tour of Maxo Vanka’s murals that Father Zagar lightly prescribed the artist’s subject matter and Vanka maximized his opportunity to pay tribute to faith while expressing his passionate beliefs about social justice, injustice, the horrors of war while helping to preserve and celebrate cultural identity among an immigrant population.

Public Tours ($20 Value)

Schedule Below & Tour Time is approx. 60 minutes

• Saturdays: 11:00am & 12:30pm
• Mondays: 6:30pm
• Thursdays: 6:30pm

Private Tours are also available, but the discount does not apply. More info here: Private Tours | Save Maxo Vanka

If you’d like to share a virtual tour of the Murals with friends and family, please contact SPMMMV at [email protected] for a code to use in the Vanka Store.

These Walls Can Talk: The Immigration Tour

About the Tour: Take a deeper dive into the history and stories of St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church’s congregation, why people immigrated to Pittsburgh, and how immigrants built their lives in America while maintaining cultural connections. Rich with detail, including oral histories and archival photos, this one-of-a-kind experience interprets a selection of Maxo Vanka’s murals in the context of world events and the cherished recollections of parishioners.

Scheduled for the last Saturday of the month @ 12:30pm & is approx. 75 minutes 

To review and book all the types of tours available to you, visit https://vankamurals.org/visit/

 Design

• The design print is shown below and was created by Standard & Custom and Evolve EA architects. It was designed to ensure that it provides airflow for the HVAC units, allows for maintenance access, and does not obstruct access to the handicap ramp.
• The partitions will be a combination of metal and wood with metalwork inspired by the design and shape of St. Nicholas' Church windows.
• Two of the panels, the back panel facing the Rectory and the side panel facing Maryland Ave, are called grow walls, that would allow, if whished by Parishioners the option to grow low maintenance greenery on those two panels - that would not interfere with the air conditioning units, or they can simply be left without plants.
• The partitions were enthusiastically approved by the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission (they thought they were as beautiful as an HVAC screen could be!) and Father Nick approved and signed off on the design as well.

Cost

• The SPMMMV is covering the full cost of these partitions.
• Their budget estimate was $15-20K, and the actual costs will likely come closer to the high end of their estimate.
• They are using their own SPMMMV funds plus they asked the "Need-Nots," an unaffiliated giving circle of friends who give to them from time-to-time, to allow their 2025 contributions to go towards this partition project.  As a result, their donations will cover about 10% and SPMMV funds will cover the remaining 90% of the total estimate.

Est. Installation Date

• The partitions are currently in production and should be ready for installation at the end of April or Early May.
• Installation should take 1-2 weeks and SPMMV will be coordinating installation around the plans for the Grotto.

As a Parish, we appreciate the care in which SPMMV took in creating partitions that brought in the element of our beloved Church windows and for covering the cost of them.

If you would like to help conserve the murals you see and enjoy each week, please consider donating at https://vankamurals.org/support/donate/