The congregation of St. John’s Anglican Church – located at 700 Main Street in Brownwood – is ensuring that the legacy of Brown County’s oldest church, completed in 1892, carries on for decades to come.

Among the steps being taken to make that commitment a reality, the massive stained glass windows are being removed from the chapel and sent to Willet Hauser Architectural Glass in Winona, Minnesota, where a year-long process results in the restoration and return of perhaps the most eye-catching features within the 132-year-old structure.

“This church is doing everything we can to preserve this historic building,” said Gwen Eberhart, a member of the church. “These stained glass windows are irreplaceable, but what’s happened is the lead deteriorates over the years and it’s brittle, and some of the pieces are loose. Willet Hauser, a company out of Minnesota, removes the whole window, they pack it in shipping crates and ship it to Minnesota. Then they take every piece of glass separately and bathe it in a solution to get the grim and years of wear off of it. Then they reassemble it with new lead and ship it back and reinstall it.”

Regarding the process of removing the windows, Eberhart said, “The first step they did was remove a protective covering that was put over the windows in the 1980s. The idea then was to protect them from lawnmowers, rocks, hail and things that are a danger to them. In the 80s, they used the best material they had, but it turned out that material darkened. You can tell from the outside what windows the cover is gone from and which ones it’s still on. They take off the cover and then take the windows, and there’s a new and improved, better material now so when the windows come back we’ll again install a protective covering that should not darken.”

As for what happens while the windows are gone for a year, Eberhart said, “They will be taking a picture while the windows are still in place, and they create a vinyl overlay that will be mounted on plexiglass. For a very short time while they’re waiting on the vinyl overlay there will be plywood, but most of the time while the windows are gone the vinyl overlay will be there and to the untrained eye it will look like the window is still there. Some people didn’t realize that the windows that recently came back had been gone.”

Currently, the windows on the west side of the church, which gets the most exposure to the sun, and being prepared for shipping. But two windows within the church, in front of the alter, have already been completed and returned just before Easter.

“It’s expensive as you might imagine so we’re doing it in stages,” Eberhart said. “We did the two in front of the alter because when the representative came to look, one of those was about to fall. They were in danger of coming down, so we did those first while we were waiting to get money to do this group.”

Among those completed are the signature “Tokyo Window,” which arrived in Brownwood by accident but has been a fixture in the church for almost 100 years. Due to a shipping error from Belgium, the window originally meant for St. Paul’s in Tokyo arrived here, while the window meant for St. Paul’s in Brownwood was sent to Japan and supposedly destroyed by an earthquake in the 1930s.

Eberhart added the church has the funds to restore the windows on the west side but, “we’re going to have to do some pretty serious fundraising to do the rest of it. We wanted to make people aware that this is what we’re doing, and we’ll be needing help.”

Repairing the bell tower is also on the “to-do” list for St. John’s hopefully in the not-too-distant future.

For those who would like to assist St. John’s Church in its renovations effort, or for more information about the project, call 325-646-7482, email [email protected], visit the website stjohnsbrownwood.com, or visit the Facebook page here.