Cabot church still seeks to have some windows from old building installed
WINFIELD TWP — It's been five years since Cabot United Methodist Church, 707 Winfield Road, celebrated its first Easter in its new sanctuary in the front of the former Winfield Elementary School.
And although three stained-glass windows from the old location at 501 Winfield Road had been installed in the front of the sanctuary for that first Easter celebration, some of the old stained-glass artwork still needs a place in the new church.
Evan Wimer of Saxonburg, a member of the building committee, said the stained-glass was created at the same time as the old church.
“The church in downtown Cabot was constructed in 1921. That's when the stained-glass windows were installed,” said Wimer.
He said, “In the 1970s we placed them (the windows) in aluminum frames and placed protective glass on the outside because of some vandalism.”
The Cabot Methodist congregation moved from its old building in 2002.
“Then in the year we moved to Winfield Elementary School we removed the windows when we sold the original church,” he said.
“We took the stained-glass windows with us. We crated them up and kept them in a storage room for 10 years,” Wimer said.
“We bought the property in 2002, and in 2012 we started construction of a new sanctuary on the property,” said Wimer.The three stained-glass creations in the front of the sanctuary, called the “Good Shepherd Window,” and two flanking windows, were installed first in time for that 2014 Easter service.Plans called for 10 more stained-glass windows from the old building to be installed along the sides of the sanctuary as funds allowed.Those 10 windows have been placed, Wimer said, “but we still have a couple of windows we are trying to get installed.”“(That's) the only thing that is missing compared to the old church,” said Wimer, a member of the Cabot Methodist congregation for 50 years,“All the windows' middle panels were ventilation panels. You could open them up on a nice spring day and get some air moving in the church. It was quite pleasant,” he said.Today, the new sanctuary is air-conditioned and the middle panels have been sealed shut.Mike Franell, 77, of Penn Hills, the artisan hired by Cabot Methodist to move the stained-glass windows from one church to another, said he still has some work to do with the remaining windows.Plans call for one window to be refashioned into a semicircular window for the planned prayer chapel to be installed in the former principal's office.
“There's a circle top that needs to be done,” said Franell “And I have to make the frame for an emblem,” referring to a third window that will also be modified, installed in a lit frame and hung in the entry vestibule.The center medallions of two of the original church windows were removed, surrounded and placed in square frames made by Franell and placed above the doors on opposite ends of the narthex.After being hired, Franell, who said he has been cutting, repairing, designing and installing stained-glass for more than 50 years, said he modified the old windows to fit their new frames, not an easy task considering the windows were four-feet wide and 10-feet high and had to be enlarged to fit their new frames.“I had to add a lot to it,” Franell said.
