When I wrote a story titled “Home is where the heart is” several years ago, I neglected to mention those “holy homes” located right in our old neighborhood of Belmont Park. Checking into the “History of the Catholic Church of Newton, Iowa,” a book written by Larry Jordan in 1976, I found brief information about this on page 17. But, for our family’s interest, I want to elaborate just a bit further.
It was back in September 1964, when we lived at 304 E. 13th St. N., that our neighbors, Bernard and Judy Lindsey, across the street discovered the cornerstone of the second Catholic church on their property. It was buried deep in the earth as part of the foundation holding up their front porch. In expanding one of their bedrooms, they came across this huge stone with an inscription partially showing.
I remember the day well. Another neighbor, Ted Dickerson, called me from across the street. Together, we went down into that excavation and scraped off the stone, which I considered a priceless jewel. It had been buried down in that hole since the old Catholic church of 1896 was razed in 1925. Bricks from the old church were cleaned up and used to construct this home at 307 E. 13th St. N.
After much digging and tugging, we got that big 391-pound cornerstone out of the hole in the ground and hauled over to our house. We stored it in our garage for a couple years. Then, we transferred it to the rectory garage at our church, located on South Second Avenue West. It was decided to incorporate this 1896 stone, along with the cornerstone of our current church built in 1927, when a new, larger church might be built at some time in the future.
Sure enough, this came to pass.
At about the same time we were dragging that historic old cornerstone out of the ground in Belmont Park, our church was the successful bidder on the 18 acres of ground in south Newton, which was previously the old Lincoln Court built as temporary housing during World War II. How fortunate we were to acquire these 18.59 choice acres of land at only $1,500 per acre, or a total of $27,000. This put plans for our new church on a firmer footing for sometime in the near future.
Back to the old cornerstone. Judy Lindsey told me that they considered their home as the most “sanctimonious” of the four houses that were built out of bricks of that old church, since their bricks came from the front part. Homes located at 315, 329 and 335 E. 13th St. N. (also built from bricks of the old church) are still standing straight and tall today. Three other homes at 313, 325 and 333 were built on vacant lots between the original brick homes in recent years.
I once heard that our 1927 uptown church could be up for sale again. So, perhaps sometime in the future there will be another group of “holy homes” in the Newton area constructed of more Catholic church bricks!