♪♪ I've had a lot of people say, you know, I've never seen those windows.

♪♪ I didn't even know they were there.

Nobody in town knows that it exists.

♪♪ [Nebbe] In 1893, parishioners of St. Luke's congregation commissioned Louis Comfort Tiffany, the son of the famed jewelry maker, to make stained glass windows for their newly built church.

This was after seeing his work displayed at the Chicago World's Fair.

♪♪ [Cheryl Vahl] There are 110 windows.

It's the 5th largest collection in the country.

[Mary Armstrong] Dubuque has a lot of art and the windows I think are just part of that.

They show that this has been established for a long time.

♪♪ [Mary Armstrong] Anybody that say they don't know about it, I say well just come, I'll show you around.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Welcome to St. Luke's.

Thank you.

So, where is everybody from?

Missouri and Illinois.

In 1896, there were 5 windows in place.

Those are -- Pay attention to the faces, they're always beautiful, very often expressive.

Anyone can walk in off the street and say, whoa, those are beautiful.

But when you know something about how they are done and what went into it, you see them on a deeper level.

♪♪ [Nebbe] While Tiffany used many new and different techniques to make his stained glass stand out, Favrile glass was his most well-known.

With help from a chemist, he used high temperatures to infuse the colors into the glass while creating various textures and densities.

He later patented the process.

♪♪ [Cheryl Vahl] They're not made like that anymore and we've learned a lot about how they are made.

The window production was done in a studio where Tiffany only hired single women for their dexterity and because they wouldn't be bothered by the demands of children and home life.

[Nebbe] The women who worked in Tiffany's studio had different titles depending on their jobs.

There were the cartoonists who transposed the drawings from the small scale to a much larger grid on a glass easel.

There were pickers, women who picked out the glass to be used in each window.

And there were cutters, women who snipped the glass and attached it to the easel using beeswax.

Tiffany would then come and either approve the women's work or shatter it with his cane.

♪♪ [Cheryl Vahl] We're doing what we can to preserve the art.

So many of his creations have been destroyed or lost and you see them on Antiques Roadshow that they have been purchased at garage sales and nobody knows what they are.

[Nebbe] After over 100 years, the windows were badly in need of repair.

The lead was getting soft, causing the windows to sag.

Years of using coal to heat the church had obscured their vibrant colors.

♪♪ [Cheryl Vahl] It was in about the 1980s they started fundraising for the restoration.

♪♪ [Cheryl Vahl] I remember the angel and the lilies window, her hands were black as were her feet.

And after she was cleaned you could see her fingers and her toes.

♪♪ [Cheryl Vahl] All the restoration is funded by people who come and see the windows and make contributions.

♪♪ [Cheryl Vahl] With the restoration, people have become more aware of how unique they are and they have become more of a valued treasure.

♪♪ [Mary Armstrong] People come because this is a large collection and they are large windows.

They just come to see what Tiffany is really like.

♪♪ [Mary Armstrong] They don't have to go to a big city or they don't have to go to a museum, they can just come here to Dubuque and here they are just waiting to be seen.

I've had several people who say they don't know how we can even listen to a sermon with these windows.

And a lot of people just like to sit and just look at them.

♪♪ [Cheryl Vahl] Cherishing what you have and taking care of that piece of history is important.

♪♪