Stained glass was from demolished church
By:David Koch
MANSFIELD The sun has not shone through the old stained-glass window of the First Presbyterian Church of Columbus for a long time. Built in 1883, the church was demolished in 1981 because it was a safety hazard.
The stained-glass window was preserved as a memory of the church that had once stood at the current site of the Mansfield Township Municipal Building.
The window was locked away in a second-floor room of the Municipal Building for almost 20 years before Special Events Committee Chairwoman Marion Reeves found it.
"I just stumbled across it one day, and when I found it, I thought we can’t just let it sit there," said Ms. Reeves.
With the help of local resident Paul Cisney and funding from the Special Events Committee, the 4-H Photography Club and the Mansfield Township Historical Society, township residents soon will be able to see a small part of their history.
Working in a shed behind his home in Columbus, Mr. Cisney has spent the last several weeks creating a new cherry-wood frame for the 9-by-3-foot window and an iron railing to protect it.
The new frame also includes lights which will bring out the red, blue, purple and orange colors of the stained glass.
The window’s design is a bright sun with blue rays and a rosy-red center.
Mr. Cisney said he hopes to have the window ready for display in the meeting room of the municipal building by next week.
The total cost for restoring the window was $2,850, said Ms. Reeves.
Mr. Cisney, a retired employee of Lockheed Martin, said he donated his time to build the window’s new frame.
"I’m just a member of the community here and I want to see things like this saved for historical preservation," he said.
But before Mr. Cisney could build the new frame, the Special Events Committee paid $1,500 to have the entire window disassembled, cleaned and put back together.
The job of dissembling the window fell to Timothy Callanan, a resident of Philadelphia who has been working with stained-glass windows for over 50 years.
Mr. Callanan’s family has been working with stained glass since his great-uncle Martin started his own business in 1890.
Mr. Callanan first heard of Mansfield’s stained-glass window through his son-in-law, John Grove, the minister of the Columbus Baptist Church.
With help from his grandson, John Michael Grove, Mr. Callanan also created new lead wires to hold the window’s glass pieces in place.
The First Presbyterian Church of Columbus was founded in 1835 and originally met in a tent. The stained-glass window was probably made when the church was built on East Main Street in 1883, said Township Historian Pearl Tusim.
Mr. Callanan said the glass in the window was at least 100 years old and isn’t made anymore.
"My granduncle could have possibly made it," said Mr. Callanan. "He was in business back then."
As the Presbyterian Church lost members, the old church was abandoned some time before it demolition in 1981. Before demolition, the township bought the land and moved its municipal offices into an adjacent Sunday school building belonging to the original church.
All that was preserved from the original church was the window, a bell, a 14-foot pew, and two small arch-shaped stained-glass windows which are believed to have hung above the church’s doorways.
They were all kept in storage in a shed next to the Municipal Building.
The bell is sitting in the garage of the Methodist Church across the street. Ms. Reeves said she would like to work on restoring the smaller stained-glass windows sometime in the future.
Mr. Cisney said he hopes to have the window on display in a back wall of the Municipal Building’s meeting room before the Township Committee’s next workshop meeting on Feb. 13.
A 7-foot section of the church’s original pew will be placed next to the stained-glass window.