The Pine Grove Community Center was slowly winched off its foundation and onto its temporary home in preparation for a historical facelift.
The historic building, located at 16624 Pine Valley Road was moved on July 26, inch by inch over to a vacant area on the property. The building is in bad need of repair and renovation and the project has been the focus of the Pine/Elk Creek Improvement Association and the Pine Grove community. The first step was removing the building from its old, unsteady foundation.
Moving an approximately 110-year-old building is easy, according to Jim Ryberg of Ryberg Construction.
Ryberg said it took about four days to prepare the building and was just a matter of picking it up and moving over using rollers and jacks. He said it wouldn’t be hard to move the building back onto its new foundation. Excavation and construction on the foundation have already begun and the project should be completed sometime by the end of the year.
Community center history
According to the PECIA, the community center was the town’s first church and served different denominations for approximately 50 years.
In 1949, William Baehr, owner of the property now known as Pine Valley Ranch Park, donated the money for the PECIA to purchase the aging church, now the oldest remaining church building in Jefferson County. The center was placed on the Jefferson County Register of Historic Landmarks in 2004.
The PECIA is a non-profit, corporation formed in 1947 by citizens to bring about changes to the community.
The center is a place for public meetings, potlucks, parties, weddings, educational activities and community events.
New construction
Pat Lang of Buffalo Creek is overseeing the building’s renovation and this is the third building she’s moved.
“I love working on old building,” said Lang. “The whole town is excited about the move.”
A few days before the move, the building was raised four-feet off the ground with hydraulic jacks and placed on large beams. Construction crews moved the building in about an hour.
Lang, who’s been in construction for 36 years said before the move, the building was braced because it was sagging due to the dry-stack rock foundation underneath the building. Sections of airline cables criss-cross the inside of the building providing stability for the move.
“That’s the reason the building is off kilter,” said Lang.
The building is 864 square feet and measures 36 ½ feet by 24 ½ feet. The ceiling is at 16 feet tall and the walls are 14 feet tall. The outside of the building is covered with beaded car-board siding and all interior walls are all wood.
When the renovations are completed a foundation with a three-foot crawlspace and foundation walls will support the building, the boards on the outer walls on the north and south sides will be removed, labeled and stored while the walls are straightened and strengthened with plywood sheeting. The roof will be replaced and the bow in the structure fixed. New insulation will help with heating the building - it’s currently heated by a woodstove. Any damaged windows will be replaced.
“We’re making it better with every step we take,” said Lang. “We’re making it straighter and flatter.”
The move was a culmination of a five-year process by the Pine/Elk Creek Improvement Association. The renovation is funded through the Colorado Historical Society’s State Historical Fund Grants for Historic Preservation. The project is called The Exterior Rehabilitation of Pine Grove Community Center. The total grant is $113,582.
Old made new
“It’s wonderful to work on old buildings,” said Kathy Lingo, architect with Avenue L Architects.
Lingo said that Avenue L Architects has been involved in the projects as the architects for several years, beginning with a historic survey that we did for the entire North Fork valley in 2005 and a historic structure assessment of the community center building in 2008. The firm specializes in historic architecture and has been involved with over 700 historic structures. They designed the architectural improvements that will refurbish the building.
Archeology in the grove
Steven Dominguez, senior archeologist for RMC Consultants arrived at the center’s newly exposed dirt foundation the day after the move. His job is to sift through the dirt and find artifacts that act like a puzzle pieces of the final picture of the building’s history.
“We observe everything that comes out and start to assemble that as an image of the activities of the area,” said Dominguez.
Thanks to a few select items unearthed during Dominguez’s excavation, he surmises the community center was built sometime in 1898. According to his research, the land was acquired the land in May of 1898 by Reverend Charles Seitter who immediately transferred the property’s ownership to the Pine Grove Methodist Church. He believes construction on the church began that year, but there’s no record of its construction.
Dominguez said building changed hands somewhere in the 1900’s and he felt it wasn’t used as a church.
Dominguez said it was common for items to simply be discarded in an around a property since there was no trash removal in the 1800’s. He said pieces of people’s lives got tossed out, covered up with dirt and forgotten and now are found when a building’s moved.
“People can choose what they are going to say, but trash tells the truth,” said Dominguez.
Items found under the church helped narrow the date of the church’s construction including woman’s dress boot common in the 1880’s, a mousetrap, a few light bulb and bottle fragments, two pieces of crockery and a hand-painted blue pattern blue porcelain bowl, vases, liquor bottles and molding, flooring, nails, a Castoria laxative medicine bottle, and a pre-1898 food can. Dominguez said the can is one of the most significant items due to its type of metal seam that was used from 1894 to 1898. Simple clues such as a can seam are used by archeologists to determine dates and that there are numerous publications on can seams. The found items will be returned to the PECIA after they are cataloged.
Lang said she’s eager for the completion of the renovations and the center is on its new foundation.
“It will be a big party when it’s done,” said Lang.
This story ran in the August 4, 2010 edition of the High Timber Times. The above is the unedited version of my story.
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