In Glasgow, Scotland - 2 I know of - 1 became a furniture store and the other a climbing centre
I think they’ll be safe.
Can a thread about churches be a zombie?
I just had to update. We recently looked at this churchcurrently for sale. We know about $60,000 of work required before even considering making modifications and renovations. Of course it falls into the same category as the one we looked at before.
I should stop looking…or start playing the lottery.
A few old churches in Northern Virginia have turned into parks, with a park authority taking control of the property and retaining the building and cemetery.
There’s at least one church building here built in the Colonial period that is an active church today. Remember to ask the priest to show you the gravestones that were defaced by US soldiers during the Civil War when troops occupied the area. No, they haven’t fixed them and they want to preserve it.
There really was a church that Arlo’s friends lived in:
Guthrie now owns it.
One of my local old churches is a climbing centre, another is a circus school.
I approve.
The country church where I grew up is now a hunting lodge. For the record, it looks weird to drive by every now and then and see stray beer cans strewn about, rusty outdoor grills sitting outside, and bow hunting targets around it. There’s also another old country church that was at one point converted to a one room school, and then converted to a house.
…torn down to put up a parking lot.
…repurposed into expensive downtown condos.
…now a Vietnamese Buddhist Temple.
I have seen, each of these, in my city. (Even the Bishop’s Mansion. A magnificent home, built well before the city, oriented toward the river, and residence of the Bishop, within my memory, now high end condos!)
Some churches, and other unusual buildings*, are listed for sale here.
*For example: a city hall, a bank, a warehouse, a movie theater, a few schools, a couple of hotels, and a convent.
Is anyone else reminded of the old Murphy’s Oil Soap commercial where the old ladies clean the church, and then the narrator says, “If it’s good enough for His house, it should be good enough for your’s?”
Another former church that has been repurposed in Nashville is actually more famous as its reincarnation. Ryman Auditorium - Wikipedia
And another one a bar, the Oran Mor. I used to live two blocks away…
This one in my hometown was initially converted into a nightclub, and later into a pizza restuarant (the signage at the time the Google car went through is for the pizza joint). The pizza place has since relocated and I think it is currently vacant (seems a shame, especially when you consider what they must have paid for that floating spire visible in the link).
You may note that it’s on Church Street. I believe the church that Church Street was named for isn’t that repurposed one, or the operational Catholic Church opposite, but for the church that used to stand on this site. It was demolished to make way for a supermarket in the 70s and the building currently houses a discount clothing retailer.
This one was sitting derelict and vandalised when the Google car came through, but it has since been demolished and I understand an office block is planned for the site. The church sold both that one and the nightclub/pizzaria when they built their new larger house of worship here.
One more; an old church (about 1700) in the center of my hometown has been made into a commercial kids playground/activity center. It makes good use of the height of the church. Parents can leave their kids there while they go shopping.
But in all fairness, that particular building hasn’t been a church in a long time. Before this, it was a concert hall. But that went bankrupt.
This is the same playground chruch, from the outside. http://www.funville.nl/typo3temp/pics/982302725f.jpg
Here is another one in Maastricht, currently being rebuilt into apartments.
Several of the inner city Catholic churches in Sydney and Melbourne, which have had falling congregations, have been taken over by the Latin mass parishes, since they’re experiencing considerable growth.
Another local church building that was vacated by a regular congregation has been turned into a wedding chapel. I don’t know if that counts as a church or a commercial establishment, but my vote would be for the latter. http://www.julietsweddingchapel.com/
There’s an old church I pass by all the time in a town called Brownsburg, IN. For a while, it was a fitness center. In a horrible attempt to de-churcify the external appearance, it was painted grey with a turquoise stripe. The address is 228 N Green Street Brownsburg, IN if you’d like to see it.
Here in Eastern Massachusetts, they’re almost always split up into condos. There are two examples within a couple hundred yards of my house, and a number of others that I can think of. In fact, I seem to live at the epicenter of adaptive reuse. There are the churches turned into condos, the old police station turned into condos (after many years as a veterans’ center), the jail that is now a bar, the courthouse that is now the recreation center, the newspaper office that is now condos, the firehouse that now houses community-access TV, the gas station/garage that is now a garden center… It’s a bit dizzying when you think about it.
Harbin PRC has a Church made into a museum and a Synagogue turned into a youth hostel.