Wind-damaged steeple is coming down on Rhodes’ ‘West Campus’
The removal of a 14story steeple is capping the transformation of a former church building into an academic facility for Rhodes College.
A demolition crew is taking down the white spire and red-brick belfry on the former Evergreen Presbyterian Church, 613 University.
Church steeples symbolize reaching toward the divine, but the college is removing this one for reasons that are more practical than symbolic.
The steeple was damaged last spring by the straight-line windstorm dubbed the Tom Lee Storm, Rhodes spokesman Matt Gerien said.
Rhodes bought the 43,000 square feet of church buildings on 10 acres for $2.6 million in 2013.
The Evergreen congregation moved out in 2015 and has since made its new home in former commercial space at 1567 Overton Park.
Rhodes has steadily made more use of the property — now part of the “West Campus” — just across University Avenue from its main, 100-acre campus.
The college turned the gymnasium into a bookstore and what had been a 1,000-seat sanctuary into the 550-seat McNeill Concert Hall.
“The space has become a very important venue on campus,” Gerien said in an email. “The Rhodes Singers and our Music Department use the space almost daily during the school year.”
Evergreen Presbyterian broke ground on the church building in 1950, paying $400,000 at the time. The church moved in large part because the congregation had become too small for the space.
The college will give to the church the metal cross that has been affixed atop the steeple.