STOCKTON SPRINGS – The Stockton Springs Community Church steeple may have survived being hit by lightning, but years of infiltrating moisture have rotted its support structure and it needs to be removed quickly before it collapses on its own.

“It’s got to come down this summer,” church member Janice Shute said Tuesday. “It really is a danger. Either we take it down or it will fall down.”

Shute and other residents of town met at the community building next to the church Monday and decided to mount a fundraising campaign to get the estimated $40,000 that an engineer advised it would take to remove the steeple. Shute said estimates place the cost at replacing the steeple in the $500,000 range.

“I know that sounds like a lot, but I just can’t imagine it not being replaced,” she said.

Talk of replacing the steeple on the 155-year-old church is for another day, she added. The priority at the moment is to ensure its removal.

“We have to move quickly,” she said.

The church was built in 1853, and a Paul Revere bell was installed in a new steeple in 1860. According to church records, the steeple was hit by lightning and repaired in 1955.

Shute said the church has spent $34,000 trying to preserve the steeple over the past six years but the structure is beyond repair.

The historic church, which sits on a prominent bluff overlooking U.S. Route 1, was designed by Alfred J. Biather, a Boston architect who moved to Stockton Springs when it was still a part of Prospect.

The prime mover in getting the church built was Nathan Griffin Hichborn, owner of a prosperous shipbuilding business on Merithew Point. Local shipbuilders and sea captains were partners with Hichborn in building the Universalist church. The name of the church was changed to the Stockton Springs Community Church in 1958. The church now is used for services by various denominations, Shute said.

The church’s Italianate style was characteristic of many of the town’s Victorian buildings. The 125-foot steeple and bell tower was built in 1860. It was designed to house a large hanging bell cast in the Paul Revere Foundry in Boston.

The church also has a historically significant bronze and brass chandelier, which was converted from oil lamps to electricity in 1909. There also is an antique E. and G.G. Hook organ, which was built in 1847, which church members bought from the First Universalist Church in Bangor for $500. The organ was shipped down the Penobscot River to town in 1864. It is believed to be the oldest Hook organ in Maine. Until its restoration in 1978, the organ was pumped manually. The instrument is included on the 1995 recording, “Historic Organs of Maine” released by the Organ Historical Society.

Other features in the church are its dimensional trompe l’oeil murals behind the pulpit and on the ceiling. The church is one of three in Maine that has such a mural. The church was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

Shute said that while a number of foundations and organizations provide grants for preservation of historic churches and steeples, they do not provide funds for removal of steeples. She said most of the money for that project would have to be raised by donation and private gifts.

To contribute to saving the church steeple, donations may be sent to Stockton Community Church Steeple Fund, P.O. Box 444, Church Street, Stockton Springs 04981.

wgriffin@bangordailynews.net

338-9546