Walls come down for Lynn church

LYNN – The Maple Street Methodist Church at the corner of Maple and Chestnut streets came down a little sooner than expected last week.Maple Street Methodist Church merged with Grace United Methodist Church on Broadway approximately five years ago and the Maple Street property was vacated. Peabody resident Dana Barclay, who is a trustee at Grace United Methodist Church, said the property was sold a year ago to a developer for a strip mall but the demolition process didn’t start until recently.”The demolition crew was removing a back wall on the parking lot side to facilitate demolition when the wall collapsed the wrong way,” he said. “The whole church came tumbling down like dominoes.”Pat Teague, who lives in the area, said she has been watching the demolition process since it started, but she did not see the actual collapse.”I’ve been watching them tear the steeple down board by board and piece by piece,” she said. “They were in the process of tearing it down when they took down a wall by the parking lot and the whole church collapsed. I imagine it was pretty scary. I’m glad no one got hurt.”Barclay said fortunately the church was able to get the main window that was over the altar out before the demolition process was started.”We’re going to restore it and install it in the church on Broadway,” he said. “We plan to do a remodel of Grace United Methodist Church in the next year and we’re going to install that window somewhere in there. We were supposed to get some windows out of there but we couldn’t get them out before they started demolition because the pews were in the way.”