Near the end, the lonely structure originally dedicated to passionate growth shows only one sign of growth itself: spindly, scraggly tree limbs sprouting from the 127-foot-tall tower, like bony fingers seemingly reaching desperately to cling to life.
Clearly, it seemed only a matter of time that the very building that kept watch over countless funerals would one day see its own sad passing.
“It really is like a death,” said the Rev. Clem Davis.
The old, Gothic Revival-style St. Bartholomew Catholic Church, which proudly has stood for 129 years at 845 Eighth St. in downtown Columbus, is coming down in the next few days, its mission complete, its impact huge and emotional among the faithful. Such is true via Christmas Masses, weddings, first Communions, you name it. Some buildings serve in a mere mortal capacity. But a Christian church?
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It stands in the service of God, and as such, looms large in the heart and psyche, as Davis, the parish’s former pastor, will readily attest. But the local brick-and-limestone building and its adjoining school has been vacant and decaying since 2002, when the congregation moved into a new, modern, 900-seat St. Bartholomew’s that touchingly included the old church’s marble altar.
Jan Banister is a local musician who became a part of the popular Catholic folk worship group Giggin’ Fer God that formed and became popular at the church in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Banister posted Thursday on Facebook a current picture of the structure stripped bare of its stained glass windows like a once-beautiful woman now without her makeup and adornments.
With her post, Banister affixed a weeping emoji. Yes, there is crying in church reminiscing. Davis remembered plenty of people crying at the final service of decommissioning held in 2002 after which Davis sadly locked the doors. Banister recalls something else years before all that.
“I remember just sitting inside during the homilies, staring at those (stained glass) windows,” Banister said. “I was just staring at how very beautiful they were. … That building really did come to have a very special meaning.”
Most of the windows that were salvageable recently were given to the parish. One featuring a family’s name to remember a donation to make the artwork possible was given to that family. And Rubicon Development of Indianapolis kept a few with the parish’s approval so the firm can create a historical retrospective of sorts of the property — meant to be included in a lobby that Rubicon will build as part of a planned 60-unit apartment complex slated for the site by 2022.
Ideally, Rubicon leaders wish the building could have been somehow saved.
“But the structure was just too far gone,” said Kevin Powell, one of Rubicon’s founders and among at least the third set of owners since its closing.
Tom Lawler was married in 1976 in the church. By about a decade later, he began serving as the parish buildings and grounds coordinator. He acknowledged that a small part of his heart will crumble when the building topples.
“Oh, yeah,” Lawler said. “We’re all sorry to see it go. I was one of the ones who crawled all over it over the years, from the basement to the roof.”
He chuckled over some of his more human memories, such as hot summer Sunday mornings, when doors would be propped open in the non-air-conditioned building to invite in the breeze.
“But sometimes, there were bees or wasps or dogs that would come in,” Lawler said.
John Dorenbusch was part of parish visionaries who guided plans for the current church that united devotees of the old St. Bartholomew and the former St. Columba Catholic Church that sat on the parish property of today at 1306 27th St. He had attended St. Bartholomew from when he arrived in Columbus in 1963 to 1966.
“It’s always hard to walk away from memories of the past,” Dorenbusch said. “But I think that what’s been done among Catholics in Columbus has demonstrated a very successful transition into the 21st century.”
Amid the sentiment of the old St. Bartholomew’s farewell, Dorenbusch, who understands such emotion, also remains a voice of reason and reality.
“We all have to remember,” he said, “that, ultimately, a (faith) community is more important than its structure.”
Already, elements of the building beyond the stained glass have a planned, new life. For instance, the ancient, much of the three-layered brick of the church, a valued commodity especially among builders of more luxurious houses, is being carefully salvaged — to be shipped to Louisiana to be part of a planned, $2 million home.
“The original builders of that church did something great,” Davis said. “And we benefitted from it for all these years.”
And, apparently, brick by brick, those benefits now could stretch toward others far into the future. Fittingly, amid a resurrected life.
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”About the former church” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
- Built in 1891 and dedicated in 1892.
- Original cost: $30,000.
- First service: June 8, 1891.
- Significant remodeling: 1975.
- Decommissioned: 2002
- Demolition: 2020
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