For more than a century, Historic St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church in New Orleans has stood out for its Victorian Gothic Revival facade. Built in 1848 by both free people of color and enslaved people, St. James AME underwent a remodel in 1903, during which the architecture firm Diboll and Owen added a striking central open spire flanked by four pinnacles. Two of the pinnacles were lost over time, and a third was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But a $200,000 grant from the Preserving Black Churches program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund allowed the church, led by the Rev. Demetrese D. Phillips, to re-create the third pinnacle and complete separate repairs to the roof and foundation.

For the re-creation, a team overseen by architect Mia Kaplan used aerial drone photographs of the one existing pinnacle to generate a 3D model. Using those measurements, they constructed a wood frame, which was later clad in metal, hurricane-strapped, painted, and installed on the roof with a crane in June 2025. “It lifts our spirits to say that we are part of a generation … that was able to make our church look, feel, and be what it’s supposed to be and what our ancestors had intended for it to be,” says Phillips.