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The former Chestnut Street Congregational Church. Image by John Phelan. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.

Hunt on for huge gargoyles missing from historic church

Tom Hoepf
Tom Hoepf
The former Chestnut Street Congregational Church. Image by John Phelan. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.
The former Chestnut Street Congregational Church. Image by John Phelan. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.

WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) – Church officials and preservationists are trying to figure out what happened to several 1.5-ton gargoyles from a Massachusetts church.

The church in Worcester is a one-fifth scale replica of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. It was built in the late 1890s and was formerly known as the Chestnut Street Congregational Church. It now is owned by an Assembly of God congregation and is on the market for $2.5 million.

The building was slated for demolition a decade ago but was saved with the help of Preservation Worcester.

The group’s director tells The Telegram & Gazette the 3,000-pound gargoyles were removed for safety reasons by a construction company that went out of business. The company’s assets were sold at auction, and the fear is the gargoyles were sold.

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Information from: Telegram & Gazette (Worcester, Mass.), http://www.telegram.com

Copyright 2014 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-10-07-14 1743GMT

ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE

The former Chestnut Street Congregational Church. Image by John Phelan. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.
The former Chestnut Street Congregational Church. Image by John Phelan. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.