While the 40-foot steeple of Crown Point’s oldest church lays toppled along Grant Street and East North Street, treasures found inside the 139-year-old church have found their way into new light.
Before the historic Trinity Lutheran Church was demolished on Jan. 6, the church body, still operating today, salvaged what they could — including the cornerstone. As they worked with the demolition crew to extract it, they discovered the 200-pound block of concrete had been meticulously formed around a sealed metal box.
“It was like a time capsule,” said Tom Thirion, Trinity Lutheran chairperson of the properties committee. “I don’t know why they did it, it was almost like they collected something from everyone in the congregation at the time to put in there.”
The contents were revealed for the first time in almost a century and a half. Inside was a collection of coins, which are now held at the church’s current location at 250 S. Indiana Ave in Crown Point, along with the cornerstone and other artifacts.
“Above the door of the school was a limestone triangle, six feet wide by four feet high that says ‘Trinity School’ across the top,” Thirion said. “We’re going to put that in our garden.”
Brick by brick, residents are preserving the church in their own ways by making pilgrimages to 400 East North Street. In two weeks, the property will be a blank slate, the demolition company says.
Days after watching the demolition, Mindie Gibbs came to collect a few bricks to keep at her home down the street in Crown Point’s Eastside Historic District. As she tearfully looked at the rubble, she thought of her grandparents.
“My grandparents went to church here,” Gibbs said. “It’s hard to see things from our past go — with the historical society museum leaving the courthouse, and now this is gone. I think that our history is getting erased too quickly. And once it’s gone, it can’t come back. So, it’s sad to me.”
The building was constructed in 1886 using stone from Joliet, Illinois, clay bricks dug from Crown Point earth, and fired by a brick company that once sat where Bulldog Park is today. Those same bricks make up the foundation of the Old Sheriff’s House and Jail at 226 S. Main Street.
While the work zone is fenced off, many residents and local history buffs have been allowed to take a memento — if they ask. Randy Goldschmidt, C Lee Construction demolition foreman, said a lot of people have been stopping by to take photos, videos and bricks.
“It was just a really neatly-built old building,” Goldschmidt. “In the construction, they put little extra details in there. Everything kind of tells a little story about how it was built. All the different construction methods. I don’t like tearing down something that I know that can be repurposed, but this was unfortunately past that point. It was a neat looking building until you got inside.”
In September 2025, Crown Point Board of Public Works and Safety voted unanimously to reaffirm the unsafe building order for the church after plans fell through to sell the property.
“It was really wet from where the roof had been leaking through all three floors, a lot of holes in the floor that went all the way to the basement and there was a lot of mold,” Goldschmidt said. “A lot of people were just worried about it starting to fall. It’s nice to give them the relief to where they just know that there’s a future for something to happen here because the building was past being salvageable, structurally.”
The site underwent asbestos and pest removal before demolition could begin. Gibbs said she assumed the church had become home to local animals, because she saw raccoons running out to escape from the building the day of demolition.
The crew will continue to haul out debris and will be removing foundation by mid-January. The week after, the earth will be filled in, creating a blank slate in the center of the Eastside Historic District. Goldschmidt said four houses could fit into the space if it were to stay residential.
In 2019, John Heidbreder and others formed the nonprofit 1886 Church Foundation to save the structure. For him, the demolition site is a hard sight to see.
“It’s sort of like losing a person,” Heidbreder said. “I just couldn’t picture it any other way but the church always being there, but it’s a remaining, new reality in life.”
Heidbreder said while the structure itself couldn’t be preserved, the foundation has kept historical documents from the church’s early history.
“We still have records written in German; it’s very significant,” Heidbreder said. “And we’ll keep those records and find a place for them eventually. Nothing of really great architectural significance could be retained, so we lost the wall stenciling, and we lost columns and things that were just too big to cart out on our own. So there’s really not much left of the history, except either. It’s just in the air, but it’s not physically there anymore.”
He said the 1886 Church Foundation is in close contact with the Lake County Historical Society. If the historical society were to find a new spot to set up their museum, he said he would be interested in providing artifacts from the church. As for the future of the property, he said he hopes it will be something that brings the community together.
“It’s going to be hard to fulfill what the church represented,” Heidbreder said. “I wish it could be some kind of a neighborhood gathering spot.”
Crown Point Mayor Pete Land said the decision was the last resort after years of efforts to salvage the structure.
“With the demolition week finally here, I share the sentiment out there that although the taking down of the church was the correct action, it nevertheless is saddening for our community, for me,” Land said. “It was at one time an iconic building, this fact I think we all can agree. When I came into the mayor’s office in 2022, what to do with the church was at the forefront of issues to be tackled. One side wanted it taken down and the other wanted it saved and used, I heard frequently from both. I was fully aware of its condition, inside and out, having responded to countless police calls there myself.”
Before the 1886 Church Foundation obtained the property, there was a previous owner who did nothing to address the structure’s deterioration, Land said. In October 2018, the building became the scene of a dramatic rescue when a fire broke out, injuring tenants. The building sustained damage and it was later determined to be arson caused by a tenant.
“I and the Foundation members had frequent meetings on possible solutions to this issue; with them developing a public awareness campaign which included a rehabilitation of both buildings,” Land said. “I fully supported this, inviting them to come to a city meeting to unveil it; unfortunately, their effort was not successful. As more years went by, the building was worsening, more complaints were coming in about it, and the integrity of the whole brick exterior was an increasing safety hazard.”
In 2024, a buyer came forward to rehabilitate the building, but plans were halted when the Crown Point Board of Works deemed the structure an unsafe building. The city said the decision was a result of several years worth of mounting safety concerns, ordinance violations and residential complaints about the vacant structure’s worsening state. Other factors included the uncertainty of the timeline of when the building would be safely occupied.
In 2025, Land said a Crown Point business, Creekside Outdoor Living, wanted to take ownership of the property. The city then delayed demolition plans and held meetings with the foundation and business.
“The City Council approved the rezone, however the business was not successful in obtaining the property unless it could guarantee the church would be saved and used, a guarantee they could not give, as was always said,” Land said. “With this last-ditch plan failing, we were left with its demolition. I have a lot of respect for and want to thank everyone who tried to help, on any level, especially to the 1886 Foundation members; also to the neighborhood for having the level of patience you showed while we worked through all of this.”
Anna Ortiz is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
