LAHARPE — In what’s better described as a disassembling than demolition, Joe Works is taking down the old LaHarpe Methodist Episcopal Church, brick by brick.
Works, of Humboldt, is salvaging what he can from the 119-year-old structure, namely the church’s ornate stained glass windows and as many bricks as he can save.
“The bricks are in pretty good shape,” Works said Thursday as he pried each from the building’s south wall.
The stained glass windows were, for the most part, intact as well, but had shown signs of age from when they were installed in 1904.
“There were several broken pieces,” Works explained. And while he’s not one of them, Works said there are folks skilled at refurbishing old stained glass windows.
The windows were what attracted Works to the old church to begin with.
He plans to restore them for a future building project.
“I have a vision for them, but not yet a plan,” he joked.
The meticulous nature of taking down the bricks will be time consuming.
Works, co-founder and recently retired president of B&W Trailer Hitches in Humboldt, recalled a similar demolition project about 20 years ago at an old church there.
Then, he fabricated a metal plate affixed to a lift, capable of prying a layer of bricks from a wall in one piece.
“But as they fell, the bricks hit each other and broke apart,” Works said. “Lesson learned.”
THE CHURCH was a centerpiece of LaHarpe’s history for more than a century, but has been largely vacant since 2007.
The Methodists had been a part of the LaHarpe community dating back to the 1880s at a site just east of LaHarpe.
As LaHarpe grew, so did the hopes for a new building. Allen County’s gas boom days saw the local population explode to more than 2,000. The Methodists eventually moved to the northwest corner of South Third Street (Ninth Street today) and South Washington, where they quickly discovered they needed a larger venue.
