7 old Iowa churches on their way to new life
This weekend, millions of Christians around the world will celebrate Easter, the day that defines their religion more than any other. For the faithful, it’s a time to give thanks for the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
But regeneration, in any form, is an ongoing process. To mark the holiday, we hit the road with a notebook and camera to find a handful of historic Iowa churches that have been reborn into some sort of new life. One building is still used for worship but is being restored. Others have been repurposed for an art gallery or a bed and breakfast. One old church is now a home for whatever wildlife crawls in the empty front door ...
'The Church' Bed and Breakfast
Built in 1857 in Bentonsport
From the outside, it looks like a quaint little brick church. Inside, it’s a roomy two-bedroom getaway.
The church’s former pastor moved in after the congregation left, in the 1980s, and turned the space into a comfortable home with a loft that split the sanctuary into two levels.
The pastor’s cousins, Jim and Pat McLeland, bought the place five years ago and opened a bed and breakfast, which has hosted hundreds of guests from as far away as Australia. Many of them jotted notes in a guestbook on the kitchen counter, including this one:
“We brought speakers with us and set them up in the living room. On Sunday we played church music. When we played a choral rendition of ‘Be Still My Soul,’ we swear we could hear the old girl sighing with pleasure.”
Jim McLeland, who celebrated “the 36th anniversary of (his) 39th birthday” on Tuesday, said that he and Pat planned to sell the property next month to a Fairfield couple, who will run the B&B as well as a new business to rent out bicycles for jaunts around the Villages of Van Buren County plus kayaks and canoes on the nearby Des Moines River.
Project Art Church
Built in 1873 in Malvern
It’s been four years since artist Zack Jones turned his hometown's old white Presbyterian church into a studio gallery and moved into the basement.
That’s about four years longer than some people expected him to succeed. It was a madcap idea at the time, but Malvern has recently staked its claim on the tourist map of southwest Iowa. Out-of-towners explore the Wabash Trace Nature Trail, stop in for burgers at the Classic Cafe and then hike a block up the hill to the “Church of Zack,” as his friends call it.
Jones moved out of the basement apartment last fall in order to rent it out on Airbnb. Upstairs he is painting a sunset mural across the sanctuary’s 27-foot ceiling.
“I call it Project Art Church for a reason,” he said, with an emphasis on the “project.”
He couldn’t chitchat for long. He had to tidy up the place for a group heading in from Corning.
RELATED: Southeast Iowa artist opens gallery in old church
Saints Center for Culture and the Arts
Built in 1910 in Stuart
The arsonist’s fire that gutted the former All Saints Catholic Church in 1995 is well documented.
Fortunately, so is the building’s $5 million restoration. A quick video in the basement fellowship hall tells the story to the tour-bus groups that stop in from time to time. The video shows some of the highlights of the church’s original splendor: Italian marble, German stained glass, hand-painted frescoes, and massive Byzantine domes designed by the same architects who built three churches in Des Moines (St. Augustin, St. Anthony, and the Basilica of St. John) and scores of historic churches on the East Coast.
The diocese relocated All Saints parishioners to another building in town. But new folks have flooded into the restored property in their wake. The center hosted more than 20 weddings last year. And before that, a Serbian Orthodox group worshipped monthly in the chapel until they found a permanent home in Des Moines.
“They were in tears, thanking us,” said Saints Center’s director Dick Doherty, who invited them. “I thought it would be a blessing for them, for us, for the town – everyone.”
The restoration is a work in progress, a start-and-stop process that depends on fundraising. The church's giant stained-glass rose window is in storage, and a series of plaster-and-horsehair sculptures of the Stations of the Cross need an extreme makeover.
One of them is in the choir loft, displayed as an example. The likenesses of Jesus, his mother, and St. John have been cleaned and freshly repainted. Mary Magdalene is still crackled and black with soot.
Doherty said many of the parishioners and neighbors who gathered to watch firefighters spray the blaze in 1995 doubted whether the church could ever be rebuilt.
But it was, thanks to support from the community and restoration know-how from a team led by the Des Moines architect Kirk Blunck, who died in January. The church’s original steel frame is actually stronger than it was before, tempered by the flames.
Doherty’s Irish ancestors settled in the surrounding countryside in the 1870s and helped build the church. So he was anxious to help rebuild it.
“This is a legacy you can leave behind,” he said.
Loucks Grove Church
Built in 1895 north of Greenfield, in rural Adair County
Wind blows through the empty front door. It whips through the pointy Gothic window frames, too, which march along the sanctuary like congregants filing out on a Sunday morning.
It’s unclear when the faithful here said their last Amen, but you can almost hear their ghosts singing hymns. The dusty guts of a busted piano litter a front corner, in a layer of bird droppings and rat-nest debris.
An outhouse has collapsed around a toilet seat in the woods out back. Wildflowers push through the carpet of leaves.
Palmyra Methodist Church
Built in 1870 in Palmyra, a few miles south of Carlisle
Marilyn Halterman raised her gaze to the church’s wind-battered bell tower, where only the most stubborn chips of paint remained.
“Well,” she said, “at least they won’t have to worry much about scraping.”
She is one of three trustees for the Palmyra Township, which has owned the building since the last Methodist congregants cleared out in the late 1970s. A group called the Friends of Palmyra Church took care of the place since then – sweeping the floor, mowing the lawn – but now most of those folks have either died or moved away.
So once again, the church’s fate is uncertain. Repairs could be costly, but a team from the State Historic Preservation Office of Iowa assured the building’s supporters that its bones are still solid. The arched windows are still intact, after some replacements, and the hardwood floor is in good shape. A shed where who-knows-how-many brides got dressed for their walk down the aisle still stands out back.
The old church has shown up in a few paintings by the artist P. Buckley Moss, and it’s still easy to see why. It’s an elegant building.
Some neighbors want to turn it into a community center.
“But we can’t wait too long,” Halterman said. “Once you lose the roof you lose everything.”
Mars Hill Church
Built between 1850 and 1856 seven miles southeast of Ottumwa
Documented proof is sketchy, but local historians say the church has at least two claims to fame: 1) It was a station on the Underground Railroad, and 2) It’s the oldest occupied log church in the country. The congregation worships here just once a year, on the second Sunday of June.
An arsonist set fire to the church in 2006, but its supporters rebuilt it with all of the logs they could salvage. Security cameras now zap video footage to a small satellite dish posted nearby.
Trinity United Methodist Church and Las Americas Comunidad de Fe
Built in 1910 north of downtown Des Moines
This massive brown-brick church has always adapted to serve the neighbors around it: first the whites who built fancy houses within easy reach of downtown, then blacks who arrived in the mid-20th century, then a more recent mix of Asian-Americans and Hispanics. The congregation was the first United Methodist group in Iowa to officially welcome LGBT folks, and these days the group proudly worships in English and Spanish at the same time.
On any given day, 300-some people ebb and flow through the front doors to community meetings, English and computer classes (with donated furniture from AIB), and free suppers six nights a week in the noisy basement.
Last week, Karen Armour was cooking tacos, corn, beans, applesauce and sheet cakes for an expected crowd of 125 to 160.
“The church has grown so much,” said Armour, who has cooked here almost a dozen years.
She’s seen hundreds of kids in Children and Family Urban Movement’s after-school and summer programs grow up and head off to decent jobs or college – options they might not have had without CFUM’s nudging.
“I’ve seen a lot of successes, that’s the best way I can put it,” she said. “We’ve watched them get on the right track.”
But all of that activity – what the church’s website calls “holy chaos” – has taken a toll on the building itself. So the congregation rallied several years ago to make all kinds of repairs. They rebuilt the leaky roof, repaired the stained glass, fortified the creaky central staircase and revamped the industrial kitchen, all with a combination of private donations, historic-preservation tax credits and a loan from Bankers Trust. Next the church hopes to renovate the classrooms on the upper floors.
A lot is changing. But the important stuff isn’t.
“The spirit of open hospitality is still the same,” co-pastor Barb Dinnen said. “We have people with differing opinions on theology, but the one thing we all agree on is that God’s love is for everyone."
"We embrace whatever comes our way and deal with it as best as we can."