The Broad Street United Methodist Church is located at 74 North Broad Street in Norwich, where it has stood for nearly 150 years. The historic building is now halfway finished with repairs that began in 2020. (Photo by Dustin Genter of 5th Dimension Photography)

NORWICH — The Broad Street United Methodist Church has stood as a community icon for nearly 150 years, and a massive restoration project on the historic structure is now halfway done.

During a Methodist revival in the 1820s, 100 new members found their way to a small group of Chenango County Methodists, led by Rev. Reuben Reynolds. In 1827, this group organized a board of trustees and formed the First Society of the Methodist-Episcopal Church of Norwich, and voted in favor of building a church.

Seven years and $3,000 later, a 38 by 50-foot church was built on the corner of Mitchell Street and North Broad Street, and was dedicated in the summer of 1836. Over the years, the church went through several changes, including enlarging the space, moving the main door, moving the altar, constructing an indoor staircase, and installing a pipe organ.

In January of 1872, Rev. Henry Wheeler was assigned to the Norwich church and tasked with “building a church worthy of the congregation in Norwich.” On May 28, 1873, the cornerstone for the new church was laid. Once completed, the church was dedicated on January 14, 1875.

The new church was described as being 110 feet long, with a width of 64 feet in the front of the building and 76 feet in the rear, built from brick and limestone, with two steeples reaching 115 and 190 feet in height, respectively. It included a sanctuary and balcony that seats a total of 1,000 people, a circular gallery, a basement, and a large lecture room.

Today, the Broad Street United Methodist Church (BSUMC) still has those same towering steeples, and three floors on the interior. The first floor includes a fellowship hall, a small dining room, a kitchen, a chapel for the 8:30 a.m. Sunday services, offices, bathrooms, a lounge, and an educational wing with classrooms.

The second floor houses more classrooms for Sunday School, TLC preschool, and an after school program; a choir room; a history room; and the church’s stunning sanctuary for their 10:30 a.m. Sunday services, complete with a balcony seating area and original stained glass windows.

Although church members say the original structure was built rather robustly for its era, the BSUMC has not been immune to the test of time, and in 2019 the church administration began planning for a massive repair project.

The six phases

The repair project initially began on a smaller scale in 2018 when church officials were looking into restoring the stained glass windows, and in the process found leaks inside the walls of the sanctuary.

They also discovered bowing rafters, splitting shingles, and bricks inside the steeples being expelled from the building. The steeples are accessible through the church’s attic, but BSUMC Grant Writer Bernie Windsor said traversing the space was a dangerous task.

“It was just dark up there, it was dangerous up there. There were old rafters and beams that the guys had to go up and walk on, and it was very difficult,” she said.

This added on attic renovations into the project. In total, the project grew into a nearly $2 million restoration, which will take several years to complete. The church hired contractors Imhoff and Company of Dover, New Jersey, and Brian Biggs Engineers of Clifton Park, New York to complete all of the renovation and repair work.

Renovations began in 2020, and were broken into six phases. Due to the danger and difficulty in accessing the areas in need of repairs, the restoration project first focused on installing safety measures, such as scaffolding and catwalks, hand rails, and safety wires in the attic.

As work continued, more areas in need of repairs or reinforcement were found, leading to additional walkways being installed,

“Much of the work in 2022 was centered on creating safe work access. Areas between trusses, below the walkways, had ladder-type workways constructed. Upper ends of these workways were attached to the main walkways, while the bottoms rested on the outer brick walls of the church,” explained Allan Strong, BSUMC Building and Maintenance Team Member and liaison between the church and contractor.

“When adequate lighting was available, it was noticed that the main roof ridge over the transept on the east end of the building was sagging. Additional walkways were built at that end of the building, on both sides, to gain access to areas where supports would have to be placed,” he added.

Although the church faced some challenges along the way, including delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, sweltering heat in the summers, and frigid temperatures in the winter, by the end of 2023 Phases 1 and 2 were completed.

Work completed in the first two phases included lighting, platforms between the two steeples, and walkways spanning the length of the church were added to the attic area. Windsor said the contractors also added blocking between the rafters of the roof where it was sagging, to strengthen and stabilize the structure, and masonry in all four corners of the main roof were rebuilt to match the engineer’s specs.

Although it’s only two out of the six phases, Windsor said it accounts for about half of the work included in the project.

Now that all of the work underneath the roof is completed, contractors were ready to get started on the final four phases, which will cover the steeples and roof. Unfortunately, they found some unexpected problems.

“During this past year or so we ran into a problem that we consider an emergency. The contractor found the very back wall of the church, the east wall, was badly deteriorating. Bricks were falling, mortar was breaking,” Windsor explained. “That’s where we connect onto the addition that came in 1958. That whole back wing, which is our education wing, our offices, we’ve always seemed to have problems in that connection between the old building and the new building.”

She said the church had to go into an emergency fund to cover these repairs, as they were not included in the grant funding awarded for the six-phase restoration project. Work has already begun on these additional repairs, but are paused until the winter weather eases around March or April.

Windsor said because the contractor will already be working on the back of the building, once emergency repairs are completed they will be switching the order of the phases. They will begin with Phase 6 and work their way down through Phases 5, 4, and 3.

She said Phase 6 will include replacing the entire east edge with new, treated wood; replacing gutters on the back end of the church; and replacing the east edge of the main roof. Contractors will then keep working across the center and some of the front side of the roof for Phase 5.

Phase 4 will replace the roof on the smaller north steeple, and the project will wrap up with the roof replacement on the larger south steeple in Phase 3.

Funding

With the start of the next phase comes the need for funding. Windsor said the church has been extremely lucky so far: they were awarded grant funding from several foundations in the area, and were able to raise enough money to keep the project moving forward over the past two years.

“We have had grants, we had applied for grants [and] received grants from the various foundations in Norwich, and in the last two years, because of the timing and as everything flowed, we did not have to go for grants in ‘22 and ‘23 because we were moving a little slower because of COVID and the weather,” said Windsor.

“And through some of the money brought forward that was left over from the beginning, and through donations, through memorials, through fundraisers, we were able to, on our own, earn over $100,000 in the two years that we could go forward without having to ask for more grants.”

However, they are now seeking funding for Phase 6. The church has spent about $1 million on the project so far, and Windsor said they have another $1 million to go, with half of that going toward Phase 5, the replacement of the middle of the roof.

“It’s going to be when we get to the middle of the roof, that’s really the biggest lump sum expense of all, because it’s the biggest part of the roof on the outside,” said Windsor. “They have to be able to hoist materials up to the roof, and it’s a large square footage to cover. There’s a lot to cover.”

Fortunately, she said they have a five-step payment plan with the contractor, so they don’t need to have full funding for each phase before it gets started, and can pay for the work as it goes on.

To fund the rest of the phases, Windsor said she has begun working on grant requests, and she’s hopeful the foundations will see the church is putting in their own efforts to raise money as well.

“They see that we are doing so many things on our own,” said Windsor. “We have so many fundraisers. They know that we are not just sitting back waiting for money to be handed to us, we really are trying to do our part.”

To do their part, BSUMC Fundraising Committee Chair Sharon Fleming will be organizing fundraisers throughout the year, including Doug’s Fish Fry, Give Back Nights at Nina’s Pizzeria and Gilligan’s Island, bake sales, an ongoing bottle drive, and rummage sales. Windsor said they’re also open to fundraising suggestions from community members.

Additionally, church supporters both locally and out of the area can support the church’s efforts with donations. Checks may be sent in the mail to 74 North Broad Street in Norwich, with an indication the donation is for the repair project. Donations can also be given to church members, or by calling the BSUMC main office at 607-334-2895.

Windsor said they have already seen significant support from community members, as well as individuals who have moved away from the area, other local churches, and even friends of church members who are visiting town.

“The community has really been wonderful. Other churches have been very helpful to us, which is a beautiful gesture between churches, it really is. And individuals from other churches in the community have helped us, and certainly the foundations have helped us. So we pray that that will continue,” said Windsor.

“If your heart has any attachment at all, or you recognize that we’re a focal point of the community, that we’re a historical, significant part of the community, and if you have something that you’re able to contribute, it’s wonderful,” she added. “Anything, any contribution, is appreciated. It doesn’t matter how much, because it adds up.”

Serving the community

Although they’re looking for support from the community, the Broad Street United Methodist Church continues to serve the City of Norwich and surrounding communities in a myriad of ways. In addition to weekly services on Sundays, the BSUMC also provides Sunday School classes for children, an adult Sunday School via Zoom every Sunday morning, a youth group, and a confirmation class.

There is a men’s group that meets occasionally for breakfast, as well as a women’s group known as United Women, who hold a Christmas bazaar every other year, frequent rummage sales, and work to support various things in the church.

A TLC Preschool program is also housed within the church, and Windsor said church space is rented by the Children’s Home of Wyoming Conference after school program, which also uses their kitchen to provide meals to the students in their care every day.

Other groups and organizations are able to use the church for meetings and events as well, such as the Boy Scouts, AA, the Red Cross Blood Mobile, the Colorscape Breakfast for Vendors, and the Bullthistle Model Railroad Museum November show. The Chenango County Health Department has also used the church as a vaccination site.

Windsor said the BSUMC also makes sure to chip in to community efforts by supporting Helping Hands, a local nonprofit that provides food, hygiene items, and cleaning supplies to individuals and families in need; and The Place, a local nonprofit that provides childcare and programming for kids and teens.

The church also provides free dinners to the community every month, and Windsor said they are now serving between 150 and 170 people each month. They also provide supplies to individuals and families affected by fires and other hardships, free food vouchers at Christmas time, and free coats, boots, hats, and gloves on their community coat rack.

“Families that have a fire or something, we’ve got supplies, all kinds of things, that we give out to people. We have a coat rack right in our hallway right outside the office, winter coats and springs coats and jackets for people who just need a coat, they come and get it,” said Windsor.

Throughout all of their community outreach, the Broad Street United Methodist Church will continue to work on the remaining four phases to restore the historic structure. Individuals who are interested in seeing work that has been completed on the interior of the church can contact the BSUMC main office at 607-334-2895 to set up a tour with Building and Maintenance Team Member Allan Strong.

“We welcome anybody who would like to go up into that attic and see what’s been done. We welcome that,” said Windsor. “He goes up there often and he takes people up and gives tours up there now. We invite people to contact us and the church, contact the office and make an arrangement, and Allan will take you up there. We want people to see it.”

As the work continues, Windsor urges the community to be patient; while completing the project may take a long time, it will be worth it in the end.

“We knew in the beginning that this was a multi-year task, and because of the money, because of the weather, circumstances, we have to be patient and ride it out,” she said.

“Over the years we’ve had a lot of patch work done, and it hasn’t held,” she added. “This is a bigger job, a bigger cost, but in the end it’s going to last for years and years.”