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‘Fixer Upper’ pair buys historic Waco church

By J.B. Smith

Waco Tribune-Herald

WACO, Texas — One of Waco’s oldest and most threatened historic churches now belongs to Waco’s most famous couple.

The Waco Tribune-Herald reports Chip and Joanna Gaines’ Magnolia Vacation Rentals LLC earlier this year bought the abandoned Second Presbyterian Church, near Sul Ross Park on Jefferson Avenue.

The husband and wife star in the popular HGTV show “Fixer Upper.”

The Queen Anne-style wooden church, featured in a 2015 Tribune-Herald feature on Waco’s most endangered historic buildings, was built in 1894 and has mostly been vacant since 1989. It has a soaring vaulted ceiling, stained glass windows and ornate woodwork inside.

Magnolia spokesman Brock Murphy didn’t immediately return phone messages seeking comment on plans for the structure. Magnolia has already renovated two historic homes in Waco and McGregor into vacation rentals and is turning the historic Elite Cafe into a new restaurant called Magnolia Table.

Sterling Thompson, a Waco architect who sold the building to Magnolia in February, said he assumes Magnolia will renovate it and put it to good use.

“They’ve brought a lot of good things to town and created a lot of business with the things they do,” said Thompson, who was architect for the Magnolia Table project.

Thompson had bought the building in 2009 with the idea of a wedding and event venue, but renovation costs and limited parking were a barrier. Still, he said the building appears to be structurally sound aside from one slightly leaning wall.

“The inside of it is in pretty good shape,” he said. “It’s got nice beams and vaulted ceiling with original pews and balusters around the choir loft. . My worry the whole time I bought it was that there were a lot of homeless people that would get under there in the crawl space in winter. I was afraid someone was going to set it on fire.”

The 2,695-square-foot church and surrounding lot were listed at $25,150 on the McLennan County Appraisal District rolls. Magnolia has also bought a vacant lot and a modest fourplex across North 13th Street.

The old church is a valuable part of Waco’s architectural history, said Kenneth Hafertepe, a Baylor University museum studies professor and local preservation expert who is writing a book about historic Waco homes.

He said the only church building he could recall that’s older is St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, and he knows of no wooden churches surviving from that era.

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