A Waterloo church that is on the Register of Historic Places may soon be demolished, according to the Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier. The City of Waterloo is seeking to seize Mount Moriah Baptist Church under Iowa Code 657A, which allows governments to claim vacant and dilapidated properties. The City will solicit proposals to renovate and restore the building to bring it up to code. If that does not happen, the property will be demolished. Buildings that are seized in this way most often end up demolished. The church was built in 1911 as Grace Methodist Episcopal and was built in a Neoclassical Revival style with a promenant and distinctive dome in downtown Waterloo. The church is often included in lists of Iowa’s most endangered historic buildings. The building currently features boarded up, broken, and open windows as well as vegetation growing in the gutters and in the mortar between the bricks. The domed roof is missing many shingles. The building has been the target of many thieves, including a contractor who was brought in to repair the building but ended up stealing copper gutters and pipes to sell for scrap.
