The home of many early pastors and Jefferson City's first bowling alley will soon come down.
The Central United Church of Christ parsonage at 713 Washington St. is no longer structurally sound, especially its foundation, said Harry Kujath, president of the church council.
However, the application for demolition was not released by the city's Historic Preservation Commission Tuesday.
"It doesn't matter if we approve or deny; we have no final authority on the demolition itself," noted commission chairman Art Hernandez.
Once the permit's waiting period is finished next month, the church will pursue a contractor to remove the building, Kujath said.
"Should this happen, we all will miss this wonderful, historic residence in the very heart of Munichburg," local historian Walter Schroeder wrote in his recently published "Southside Sketches."
The church first announced its intention to demolish the parsonage last year, but the commission and other historic preservation-minded individuals encouraged the church to reconsider alternatives to demolition.
"We're kind of in dire straits," Kujath said. "A lot went on in the building that is part of our history and tradition.
"We didn't want to remove it. We would have loved to keep the building and use it for something, but the condition of the building is so severe it is almost impossible to make it safe."
The 1898 two-story brick home was last used by the Calvary Lutheran School re-sell store, Calvary's Gift, which moved out about two years ago. Before that, the home served from 1991-2010 as an Emmaus Group Home for about five men with developmental disabilities, Kujath said.
But it was built originally as a home for the church's pastor, for which it was used through 1982. Prominent local architect Charles Opel designed it, though it was not the congregation's first parsonage, Schroeder wrote.
The German Protestant congregation was organized in 1858 and built its first church on the corner of Ashley and Washington streets the next year.
The first parsonage was designed by the first pastor, the Rev. Joseph Rieger, and was completed in 1860, in time to serve as a hospital to the Civil War's wounded, as well as home to Rieger's family of nine, Schroeder wrote. There, he also held community valuables for safekeeping and married former slaves.
The congregation built the existing Gothic church in 1892.
Six years later, they decided to build the existing parsonage in the Queen Anne style, similar to other Munichburg residences being built at that time, Schroeder wrote.
The 30-by-50-foot building features quality woodwork, a large front hall with an open stairway and banister, large living room and dining room, a kitchen with a pantry and a pastor's study with a bay window facing the church. The second floor has four large bedrooms and a porcelain bath.
Fred Buehrle, a congregation member like architect Opel, did the brickwork, and Ernst Braun and Schwartz did the construction. Schroeder speculated the limestone foundation may have been recycled from the 1860 parsonage.
The original small, ornamented wooden porch was replaced in 1914 by the present, brick-pillared wrap porch, he continued.
The city's first bowling alley was built in 1920 underneath the concrete driveway addition.
According to Schroeder's book, the soon-to-be-razed building saw 151 weddings between 1923-39, and during World War II, four-leaf clovers from the backyard were sent to servicemembers as lucky charms.
The church does not have definite plans for the cleared lot, Kujath said.
"We'll put that space to better use than it is right now," he said.