This Terrebonne Church is in Danger of Demolition
This is St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in Terrebonne, Minnesota, and it is a place in danger of being demolished.
Update: This church was demolished in a controlled burn on April 29th, 2016. Some of the photos on this page are featured in our book, Churches of the High Plains, which you can order in our store, or ask for it at your favorite local book store or gift shop.
According to the Star Tribune, the Crookston Diocese sent a letter to parishioners in March as notice of their intent to knock down St. Anthony’s by the end of 2015 due to maintenance costs and concerns over black mold and a sloping floor due to frost heaves.
There is a local group, passionate about preserving this place, and they’ve done a fantastic job raising the funds to delay demolition thus far, but they need your help to save this church. Their Facebook page is here.
There was a very friendly and pettable golden retriever who paid me a visit while I was at St. Anthony’s.
Anybody know if there’s anything in this cornerstone? Hopefully, it will be another hundred years before we find out.
Photos by Troy Larson, copyright Sonic Tremor Media LLC
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7 thoughts on “This Terrebonne Church is in Danger of Demolition”
If the church is not on the historical register, it needs to get there. Once on the register, it is much harder to demolish. I can feel a special Terrebonne Celebration in order to raise funds.
Same excuse they used to destroy St. Micheal’s, a National Polish Catholic church in the village of Ashuelot, Winchester, NH. When I wrote a column decrying this in the local broadsheet, the canny demolisher sped up his razing by a few days, running the treads of a bulldozer over hand painted wall murals to silence hope.
http://www.sentinelsource.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/saving-catholic-heritage-by-steven-w-lindsey/article_e8be2dde-d6b6-54ce-bd82-4f7d473040ed.html?mode=image&photo=1
Is this open to anyone? Or do we have to pay? Is there a special license or anything needed to film? We’re want to record an intro video.
You can still see nice views of the church in Google’s Street View, which is from August 2012. It was a surprise to me that Google sent a camera-equipped car down a remote country road like that.
The church has been torn down. I drove by in May 2016 and it was gone.
Does anyone know if it ever had a pipe organ in it?