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Toledo’s historic buildings win a reprieve against the wrecking ball

Posted By: Toledo Blade on July 20, 2025.  For more information, please click here to read the source article.

Toledo has granted aging landmarks a second chance, holding back the bulldozers in a city where parts of the past may still be worth building a future around.

The Toledo City Council has voted to extend a citywide moratorium on demolition permits for historic buildings, giving the city’s preservation advocates six more months to assess, and potentially save, some of its most iconic architectural structures, including Sacred Heart Catholic Church.

Originally passed in July, 2024, the moratorium was set to expire this summer. It will now remain in effect until Jan. 17.

During that time, the Toledo Plan Commission will continue evaluating both privately and publicly owned buildings more than 75 years old that historically served as regular gathering spaces — structures that notably functioned as churches, community halls, and cultural centers.

Councilman Mac Driscoll, who supported the extension, said the extra time is crucial to the city’s broader preservation strategy.

“We can’t just have an indefinite moratorium,” Mr. Driscoll said. “But we need this extension because the Plan Commission study showed there are hundreds of buildings that meet the threshold. In order to chart a future for these buildings, we have to get them on the National Register of Historic Places.”

Getting on that register doesn’t guarantee salvation, he added, but it does unlock powerful tools, including federal and state tax credits, grants, and redevelopment incentives that could help owners stabilize and repurpose aging structures rather than razing them.

A preservation push

Sacred Heart’s potential demolition galvanized many preservation advocates and former parishioners last year. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Toledo closed the 140-year-old church in January, 2024, and designated it for demolition, but the city’s pause on permits brought those plans to a halt.

The diocese, which has long maintained that Toledo lacks the legal authority to interfere, reiterated its opposition after the extension vote.

In a statement, the diocese declared: “We would hope that reason will prevail, and that city council will rescind the ban and concentrate on addressing the critical issues facing our city instead of interfering in matters which are within neither its purview nor authority.”

But city leaders and residents see Sacred Heart differently, not just as a church, but as an anchor of identity, community memory, and architectural grace.

“We’re losing a part of our history every time we demolish a house or a structure,” Councilman Theresa Gadus said, noting that while Sacred Heart wasn’t the only reason the moratorium exists, it was a wake-up call.

“They asked for a six-month extension. They really felt that there was an incomplete preservation picture,” she said.

At-risk historic sites

The Toledo Plan Commission’s survey identified 117 historically or culturally significant buildings across the city, based on an independent review of 5,700 points of interest from public databases, property records, and land-use codes. Many of these buildings, particularly those outside designated historic overlay zones, currently lack formal protection from demolition.

Thirty structures among them, ranging from schools to clubhouses and houses of worship, were flagged as strong candidates for local landmark designation. Most were in average or above-average condition, although the commission found that water intrusion and aging roofs posed the greatest threats to their long-term survival.

In response, the city council is exploring stabilization programs involving low-interest loans, facade grants, roof repair subsidies, and even emergency tarping.

The city is also working with the Toledo Housing Court and city prosecutors on policies to address “demolition by neglect,” when buildings are allowed to deteriorate until restoration becomes impossible.

Mr. Driscoll said he hopes many of these efforts can be completed before the moratorium expires.

“If we can get these buildings on the register, they become eligible for a lot of capital that can support their redevelopment,” he said.

Mr. Driscoll added that inclusion on the National Register depends on age, typically 50 years or older, and on cultural, neighborhood, or architectural significance.

“These buildings are calling cards to our history,” Mr. Driscoll said. “Once they’re gone, we can never recreate the craftsmanship or detail they represent.”

‘A failure of imagination’

For Michael Young, a former Toledo city planner and co-chairman of the San Diego Environment and Design Council, the moratorium is a “philosophical imperative.”

“It makes far more sense to retain what’s already been built than to go through demolition,” Mr. Young said. “Demolition is a failure of imagination.”

He argued that preserving existing structures is not just historically sound, but economically smart.

“All the labor, all the raw materials, have already been expended. Demolition costs money — permits, asbestos removal, disposal — and so does new construction,” he said. “Preservation is affordability.”

Mr. Young sees Toledo’s economic struggles not as a liability, but as an unlikely blessing.

“We didn’t have a frenzy of new development that wiped them out. Now we have this inheritance. Beaux-Arts banks, Italianate storefronts, even modest 1920s homes with stunning craftsmanship. That’s the beauty of Toledo. It’s man-made,” Mr. Young said.

He called Sacred Heart “a stunner” that anchors the view from the Anthony Wayne Bridge, which if lost “would be a disgrace.”

Mr. Young believes even buildings that seem difficult to reuse, like churches, can find new life.

“They can be converted into wedding venues, restaurants, or concert halls. A church need not always remain a church,” he said.

But for Mr. Young, what’s truly at stake isn’t just utility or aesthetics; it’s legacy. He said these structures were built not with convenience in mind, but conviction.

“They can also be instantly reanimated when you walk inside and notice that the column you’re looking at was hand-carved, that the stone may have come from overseas,” Mr. Young said. “The people who built this went to their graves thinking this was forever.”

He emphasized that most historic churches weren’t erected by the elite but by ordinary people — immigrants, laborers, and working-class families — who saw these structures as their life’s greatest communal offering.

“These are not wealthy people. They contributed their money to this house of worship, thinking it was their legacy,” he said. “These are the headstones of our ancestors. That’s what these houses of worship are.”

To reduce them to just another building or rubble, the urban planner argued, is to dishonor their memory.

“You’re effectively desecrating their memory and their legacy by only seeing the building as a burden,” Mr. Young said.

He also recalled one of his most painful preservation defeats: the demolition of St. Paul’s Methodist Church in the 1970s. The hexagonal stone structure on Madison Avenue had survived a fire, but despite Mr. Young’s plea to its young pastor to rebuild within the intact walls, it was torn down.

“Now it’s a parking lot. That was one of my worst losses,” he said.

“These buildings are our legacy, our grandparents’ headstones, in a way,” Young added. “When you’ve been graced with so much beauty by the people who preceded us, our fathers and grandfathers, it’s almost obscene to just casually cast it aside. To destroy that is to desecrate memory.”

And yet, he said, Toledo still has a chance to choose a different path.

“Preservation takes vision and patience. Once a building is gone, the opportunity is gone. But if we keep the ingredients — the stone, the timber, the craftsmanship — then there’s still the possibility for revival,” Mr. Young said.

A future grounded in the past

While the moratorium offers a crucial pause, officials acknowledge that long-term preservation will require sustained collaboration among city staff, developers, nonprofits, and residents. It will also demand funding and community buy-in.

The commission has recommended policies to support building maintenance during the freeze, “mothballing” them with expanded metal grates, fencing, and stormwater protection.

These measures, Mr. Young said, can help prevent vacant buildings from becoming neighborhood burdens.

“The demolition moratorium is admirable, but we need to help owners maintain these buildings while they wait,” he said. “It’s not fair to ask them to hold the line without support.”

As Mr. Driscoll puts it, “We don’t just want to say no to demolition. We want to say yes to restoration.”

That vision may take time. But for now, Sacred Heart and dozens of other Toledo landmarks are still standing. And still waiting.