park view lutheran church quickly brought down and trucked off to landfill

with the drebohl brothers and zessler "munich" style art glass windows removed from park view lutheran church (see prior posts), my only business being was to document its senseless and destruction, that surprisingly, went largely unnoticed by neighbors and preservationists alike. it was utterly surreal to witness such a quick and quiet death of a church building that served its congregation since 1929.

the final phase of documenting its death concluded with securing the dated cornerstone and time capsule when the cut indiana limestone facade came crashing down. shortly after i retrieved the capsule and stone, i left the site, never to return.

as of this writing, i'm sure the five residential units are quickly being erected on the former site of the church demolished less than two months ago. i should note that i have begun receiving emails from members of the congregation stating their disbelief that the church is simply gone.

the collection of images pertaining to the destruction of this building are by no means cohesive - due in large part to my absence and the rapidity in which the church was struck down by the relentless jabbing from the excavator's bucket. thus, the following images selected for this post have been divided into two sections: photographs taken by jose "oso" hernandez, who is one of my most trusted team members that has taken on this role before when i'm away. in addition to photo-documenting the church's destruction, he managed to rescue a few additional artifacts at the last minute while the wrecker was working on the opposite side of the building.

the second section contains images i captured during the final stages of the church's demolition, when i was there to extract the cornerstone and time capsule. as i've said before, i did not want to take on this salvage (i have outright avoided and/or passed up on many church salvages for the greater part of 15 years), but i could not help seeing these remarkable hand-painted windows get smashed. a lot of time and effort went into removing the windows with very little time to do it. the wrecking machine was tearing down the neighboring school while we were high up on ladders removing the church glass, so there was a lot of self-induced pressure and stress to complete a job i was struggling with from the very beginning.

documentation of the first phase of demolition and "last minute" salvage efforts.

documentation of the second phase of demolition and extraction of time capsule and cornerstone.