‘Big undertaking': First Presbyterian Church in Manitowoc seeking donations for fresh coat of paint

Yahoo

11-06-2025

MANITOWOC, Wis. (WFRV) – First Presbyterian Church was built in Manitowoc in 1870 and has prominently carved its place in the lakeshore city's skyline ever since. But such a grand, 155-year-old building also needs a touchup every once in a while.
'Though it's brick, there's a lot of woodwork around the trim, doorways and things that haven't been done for quite a while,' Pastor Matthew Sauer, who leads the Manitowoc Cooperative Ministry, said. 'It's a big undertaking. It's milled woodwork and things, so it's got design to it and architectural shape to it.'
Sauer says that the project is not just necessitated by appearance, but also safety.
'We need to get this wood paint, and one it's just a cosmetic thing, but there's also wood rot in some place where we've got to worry about replacement of wood in some places, and we can't do that until we're up there,' he said. 'It's a great facelift but it also allows the building to be a safe and secure place, it's more than cosmetic.'
The brick building with original wooden highlights is both a place of worship and center of community service.
'We need to make sure that our facilities are safe and are able to meet the work that we do,' Sauer said. 'Every Wednesday night we feed 200 people free dinners, they're all prepped here and we serve right out the front doors. People walk up and drive their cars. In the winter we also host the warming shelter here. It's a safety issue, it's a preservation issue, it's a mission issue to the community.'
Repainting and repairing century and a half old wood is not the average carpentry project, it comes at the expense of tens of thousands of dollars.
'It needs to be done right and take it's time and it's a little bit slow. It's probably between $17,000 and $20,000 but that could go up if they find they need to replace a lot of woodwork,' Sauer said. 'It's not just running sand paper over a two by four and throwing some paint on it with a paint sprayer. It's got to be detailed, can't have it spilling into the windows, we've got beautiful stained glass windows.'
About half of the funding will come from public donations, with the rest coming from the church's pre-existing building fund. Donations can be made on the Manitowoc Cooperative Ministry website.
'There [is extra budget] built into our bid that contingency, that if we need to be replacing wood, that we have that built in already,' Sauer said. 'You can't just go to Lowe's and pick that all up. This is all hand done, so nothing is exactly the same.'
Always a work in progress, left over funds will be put towards renovating bathrooms and repairing the organ.
'It's humbling. It makes us want to do it right. So that 20 years from now someone isn't complaining 'how come they took the cheap way out,'' Sauer said. 'I talk metaphorically about the ghosts that are in the building. And there are times when I sit in the building and listen to the building have healthy creaks.'
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