143-year-old Cambridge church celebrates the completion of $2.5M restoration work
Carmen Groleau | CBC News | Posted: May 11, 2023 10:05 AM | Last Updated: May 11, 2023
'The support we've gotten from the community is very heartwarming'
It was just over five years ago when the congregation at Central Presbyterian Church in Cambridge had a choice to make: either move and build a new church or stay and renovate the 143-year-old church.
After years of work and lots of grant writing, the church celebrated the completion of a $2.5 million restoration of the church's stonework, slate roof, as well as the restoration of its stained glass windows.
Horst Wohlgemut, a church member who was instrumental in managing the restoration, said the congregation felt a calling to stay and serve the community.
"If we moved to the suburbs or something, we would need to establish a new community," he told CBC News during an open house the church hosted on the weekend of May 6 and 7.
He said the church also holds major food drives to support the food bank, makes the space available for community groups and even opens its doors to host the K-W Symphony.
Wohlgemut also said the congregation felt it was important to preserve the church's history in the community.
"There's a real strong feeling that this is where we want to be and we want to save this," he said, adding the congregation didn't want what happened to the Preston Hotel to happen to the church. Back in 2020, the hotel was demolished after efforts to save the historic building failed.
The church is an icon in Cambridge, Wohlgemut said. The church spire has been part of city logos, and the front has served as a backdrop for popular shows like Murdoch Mysteries and The Handmaid's Tale.
"It's very clear that [the community] recognizes the worth of this little jewel and they use it for their advertising, we don't mind, and the city has reciprocated with giving us some grants over the years," he said.
Wohlgemut said the city provided the church with four grants to help with this restoration phase. Wohlgemut said there is still some restoration work that needs to be completed on the exterior of the church.
Fixing the roof and preserving stained glass windows
In 2017, a leaky roof in the oldest part of the church was the spark that ignited the work to preserve and restore the church. Wohlgemut said the church's insurance company had cancelled their coverage at the time, and to get new insurance, he said they needed to fix the church first.
That's when Wohlgemut reached out to get an engineering study done on the integrity of the building to figure out what areas of the church needed most work.
"The things [the engineers] mentioned, roof and stained glass windows. They were the worst case," he said.
From there, Wohlgemut said work began on the windows after getting a grant from Veterans Affairs Canada to restore the stained glass window on the west side of the church.
The church also replaced the original slates from 1880 with new ones and are re-purposing the old slates to make charcuterie boards to sell to the public.
Open house held
To celebrate the recent completion of this restoration phase, the church held an open house for the community.
Wohlgemut took several groups throughout the church, showing people the stained glass windows and even took groups though a narrow stairway to reach the steeple, where people could ring the bell and try the church's chimes.
The chimes were installed in 1906 and played from a stand with wooden handles connected to metal rods.
Local politicians like Regional Chair Karen Redman, former Cambridge mayor Kathryn McGarry, as well as Cambridge regional councillor Pam Wolf were part of a tour Sunday.
Wolf sat on the Cambridge heritage committee for 16 years and was there when the restoration project began.
The city's heritage committee had limited funding, but even so, she said they gave the church the maximum amount they could because it was an important project for the community and the congregation.
"Now that I'm on the regional committee, I see that it's also the region's number one project in terms of funding and I think it's because everyone recognizes how important this building is — the architecture, the history — to the city of Cambridge," she said.
Wohlgemut said the restoration project could not have have been done without help from the community and committees that stepped in.
"The support we've gotten from the community is very heartwarming. The church itself could not have afforded that on its own. We had to have help and we're getting that," he said.