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Divine recycling: New York church moving to Atlanta -- piece by piece

An Atlanta church hopes to preserve a crumbling New York sanctuary by moving it to the South and rebuilding it green.

By E.B. SolomontWed, Jun 23 2010 at 10:10 AM EST
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MOVED BY GRACE: Rev. Francis "Butch" Mazur poses in front of St. Gerard's Church in Buffalo, N.Y. The 99-year-old St. Gerard's would get a second life as Mary Our Queen, in an up-and-coming parish. (Photos: David Duprey/AP)
 
Preservation through relocation. That’s the aim of a Roman Catholic parish in suburban Atlanta that plans to relocate a shuttered church in upstate New York — recycling it piece by piece 900 miles south.
 
The 99-year-old St. Gerard’s Church in Buffalo was closed in 2008 in a diocese-wide restructuring prompted in part by declining membership. Around that time, Mary Our Queen in Norcross, Ga., was booming — with a membership of 750 families and a sanctuary built for 600.
 
“We needed more space,” said Rev. David Dye, who conceived a plan to buy and transport the aging church.
 
Initially, he said, his congregation retained a local architect to design a new space that would be filled with antiques and relics from other churches. On a trip to Buffalo, Dye was floored by the limestone façade and stained glass of St. Gerard’s. “The architect just said, ‘We’ve been talking about bits and pieces. We should bring the whole building,’” Dye recalled.
 
Now Mary Our Queen is raising $16.5 million for the ambitious project: to take St. Gerard’s apart stone by stone, and ship it to Atlanta, where it will be painstakingly reassembled. (The campaign is being documented on a website, Movedbygrace.com.)
 
Constructed with Indiana limestone, St. Gerard’s is modeled after the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome. The 12,000 square-foot church is graced with soaring ceilings, a 110-foot bell tower and stained glass windows throughout. 
 
Some cosmetic fixes are in the works. But the church’s large wooden confessionals will be moved to Atlanta along with a marble alter. Canvas paintings on the walls will be peeled off and restored once they reach their destination. “Restoration, repairs will have to be done,” said Dye.
 
Not lost on Dye and his congregation is the environmental impact of their project. Pews will be refinished, but no new trees will be cut down. The exterior limestone will be transported, avoiding a trip to the quarry.
 
“It is something that we’ve definitely not only thought about, we have a lot of interest in that aspect,” he said. “We didn’t set out to be environmentally friendly,” said Dye, but the congregation is “very pleased about that part.”
 
So is the church’s old Buffalo constituency. The final mass at St. Gerard’s was celebrated in January 2008, as the diocese was making plans to sell the building.
 
“When I heard this news, it was the answer to my prayers,” Dorothy Eckl, a former church trustee and longtime parishioner, said in an interview with the Western New York Catholic, the diocesan newspaper. “It’s great that our legacy will live on in Georgia.”
 
 
Once the church is moved, the New York site will benefit from an environmental boost. “The property will be turned into green space,” according to Kevin Keenan, director of communications for the Diocese of Buffalo. Residents of transitional housing adjacent to the church will have access to the space. “A marker will also be placed, noting the original location of St. Gerard Church,” he said.
 
Only the Buffalo City Council has resisted the idea. “It’s not right,” Council President David Franczyk told The Associated Press. “You can’t strip-mine a city’s historic heritage.”
 
But Atlanta preservationist Rodney Cook, an enthusiastic proponent of the project, envisions a new trend. Southern churches are booming, even as congregations in the Northeast are dwindling. “With all this growth and thriving, it seems perfectly appropriate for these buildings to come here,” said Cook, who is president of the National Monuments Foundation.
 
St. Gerard’s is a “sublime” specimen of ecclesiastic architecture, he said. “We don’t build like that anymore,” he said. “There’s a lot of really astonishing architecture that we did have that we no longer have, so I see it as a great tribute, this sort of exchange.”
 
Indeed, the Notre Dame School of Architecture plans to study the environmental impact of the move, which could pave the way for future “green” relocation projects.
 
“This does have the potential for becoming a way of preserving durable building stock,” said Aimee Buccellato, an assistant professor at the architecture school who is spearheading the research project. “From my own perspective, it’s certainly an interesting case study about preservation,” she said.
 
She said the benefits of preserving a building, in place, are already well-known. “To adapt and reuse a solidly built, long-life building in place is fundamentally the largest-scale recycling you can do,” she said. Less clear is the value of preserving a building in another location. To probe the question further, Buccellato plans to use digital and manual methods to collect data.
 
She said it is impossible to ignore the “intangible” aspects, including the feelings people have for popular civic buildings. 
 
“These buildings do have value,” she said. “They will be loved, they will be maintained, and the buildings that can perform like that, those are durable buildings, they are sustainable buildings. They are green buildings.”
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Related Topics: Recycling, Religion & Spirituality, Sustainable Building

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anonymous
Casey Milbrand 05/18/2011 02:50 AM

My family went to St. Gerard's for 70+ years. After my grandmother Edna Milbrand passed I drew this picture of St. Gerard's from my fathers bedroom window on Texas Street. I am happy to share this image with you of the church in it's original context on the east side of Buffalo. While I am sad to see the church go, it served my family for many decades and it deserves to be used in the way it was designed, as a place that people went to feel closer to God. Click the link below if you want to.... More

anonymous
churchthatmoves.com 07/21/2010 17:07 PM

on the St Gerard move

anonymous
Ken & Bonnie Curtis 06/30/2010 10:38 AM

Without money to sustain it, and a dwindling parish congregation, St. Gerard's was doomed to crumble on its foundations. What a miracle that it will be re-purposed in Atlanta! We are following every step of this miraculous journey on movedbygrace.com. Thank you Butch for your vision, tenacity and resolve to help make this amazing journey a reality!

anonymous
Casey Milbrand 05/18/2011 03:00 AM

Hi there! It's sad to see the state of the neighborhood surrounding the church. Unfortunately there just aren't enough people going to church anymore, and because the city isn't booming like it used to, we have to let go of things that we cannot sustain anymore. My gram Edna Milbrand lived at 197 Texas Street for 70 years and even her house would be better off if it were relocated. Such a lovely house. I am so happy I drew this view from my father (Thomas Milbrand's) bedroom window of the.... More

anonymous
Kathy Marion 06/30/2010 10:05 AM

With all the crumbling eyesores throughout Buffalo, we should all be thrilled that this beautiful building will live on and be appreciated for generations to come.

anonymous
Oakmoss Graham 06/23/2010 11:41 AM

I was baptized at St. Gerard.. It is a magnificent building. The greenest thing, however, would be to leave it where it is and re-use it appropriately. Why is that not happening? Several other churches in Buffalo have been re-purposed. A lot of carbon will be expended to the atmosphere in shipping this long distance.

anonymous
fr butch 06/29/2010 20:41 PM

give me an idea for reuse of the church. it's NOT true that many of the churches in bflo have been re-perposed

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