Dear Preservation 911,

The Bishop Gilmore School is being demolished because its owner, the Cathedral of Helena, lacked the money to maintain it. (Jesse Aber)

In Helena, Mont., two historic structures are disappearing from the landscape. This month, both the Shober House and the Bishop Gilmore School, a huge Greek revival building, are now coming down. The Shober House will live to see another day; its owner is moving the 1885 house. Read more >>

The salvors have taken down the massive dentilated pediment from Bishop Gilmore. The building's huge, 45-foot-tall columns are now being dismantled, capitals first. The story here is demolition by neglect, although the owner, the Cathedral of Helena, did comply with the city's ordinance that the structure had to sit for a year before coming down to provide a last chance for an adaptive re-use or some other solution.

Across the street, Scott Nelson and his contractor are dismantling windows before sectioning the Shober House to move in sections to his new home site. It will be something to see the brick walls make the move without coming down.

This neighborhood will look strange without these two prominent historic buildings on their original sites.

There were no alternatives feasible for saving the school for adaptive reuse because of asbestos issues and lack of funding. I had heard several years ago that the Cathedral had wanted more parking, which, ironically, was the biggest reason the Methodist St Paul's across the street wanted to demolish the Shober House.

A friend that was watching the demolition and is a member of the St. Helena Cathedral congregation told me that vandalism and teens entering the old school to party and carry on was such a liability that the church had to go forward on demolition. My friend had proposed using the columns for a memorial on the south side of the Cathedral, but that idea was abandoned as the columns were "too large for the memorial site." I guess the salvage company gets the spoils: columns and capitals, etc.

Sincerely,

Jesse Aber

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