City Church / City Methodist Church, Gary
The old City Methodist complex is more than a famous ruin. It records how Gary tried to build a downtown moral and...
Watchlist Blog
Gary moves from a ruins garden to demolition at City Methodist
A July bid notice places Gary's best-known ruin inside the regional blight-elimination program, ending years when stabilization and a public ruins garden remained possible.
July 6, 2026
City Church / City Methodist Church, Gary
Updated 2026
The RDA is seeking a contractor to demolish City Methodist and the former St. Mary's Hospital, shifting the church from unresolved landmark to impending loss.
City Methodist's future is no longer suspended between decay and a ruins garden. On July 6, the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority issued a notice to bidders for demolition of the church at 549-77 Washington Street.
The action turns one of Gary's most photographed buildings into an urgent documentation project. It also closes a preservation argument that sought to make the surviving walls safe, public, and historically legible without reconstructing the church.
Read the church's architectural and social history in City Church / City Methodist Church, Gary.
Track more Gary preservation changes in Watchlist Blog.
Clearing the hazard also clears the architecture that made nearly a century of Gary history visible at full scale.
What Changed
The RDA's third round of Gary blight-elimination work pairs City Methodist with the former St. Mary's Hospital at 540 Tyler Street. A mandatory contractor site meeting was held July 9.
The program began with $12 million shared by the RDA and City of Gary and later received $15 million in READI 2.0 support for demolition, selected renovation, and development incentives.
What The Ruins-Garden Idea Would Have Kept
The earlier concept accepted that the roofless church could not return to its original use. It proposed stabilizing part of the complex as public landscape and interpretation.
Demolition removes the safety and maintenance burden, but it also removes the architecture that made the site's history physically present. A photograph archive cannot reproduce the scale, material, or relationship to downtown streets.
What To Watch Next
The contract award, exact demolition limits, engineering documentation, archaeological monitoring, material salvage, treatment of the historical marker, and future parcel use should all be public.
Gary should also state why the ruins-garden path ended, what stabilization would have cost, and how the church's migration and segregation history will remain visible after clearance.