Bay View United Methodist Church gets an upgrade

“Everyone seems to know the church on the hill,” Larry Munn said.

While his goal was to restore everything possible, he said he wasn’t able to salvage some parts of the exterior due to extensive damage.

The church was built in 1888 and is the oldest church in the state never to have closed its doors, said trustee Rhonda Gothberg. While the Methodist Church owns the building, trustees are responsible for keeping it up and running.

While the congregation had done what it could in recent years, problems with rot and protection from rodents were becoming too much to handle.

Gothberg said the church decided to hire Surface By Design because of their appreciation for preservation.

When the church was built, the area was comprised of loggers and millworkers, and everyone worked together to build it.

“The community has a strong connection to this church,” she said.

In part because of that connection, Gothberg said the exterior of the building has been virtually unaltered since its construction.

“It’s been good for us for this many years,” she said. “Let’s keep it for this many more.”

Gothberg said she’s working to get the building on the National Registry of Historic Places in order to cement the significance she feels the building has to the community.

Susan Olson, another of the church’s trustees, said she’s been happy with the work Larry Munn has done so far. He has an eye for detail and shares her goal of preserving what they can while faithfully recreating what they can’t.

“He’s really put a lot of his heart into this job,” she said. “He’s done more than we could have imagined.”

Larry Munn said he’s been on the job for about three weeks and is almost finished.

While he is trying to restore what he can, he said the 9-foot-wide trim pieces were damaged to the point that they needed to be replaced.

Their clover-like design, while simple, is an important indicator of the time that the church was built, Gothberg said.

When faced with how to re-create the trim pieces, the Munns and their team donated their time to trace and cut replacements that are identical, but sturdier, than the originals.

“We love to preserve things,” Melanie Munn said. “It’s great to be a part of restoring (the church).”

Paint for the project was donated by Sherwin-Williams Paint Store in Mount Vernon, Olson said.