HILO, Hawai'i — State Historic Preservation officials have discovered a 120-year-old Congregational church in Kohala has been destroyed, marking the second recent discovery of damage or destruction to a site on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Kohala Pilgrim Church, formerly known as the "Kohala Foreign Church" or simply "Haole Church," was burned sometime before 1989. State officials, however, did not discover the loss until they toured the Big Island checking for damage to historic sites in the aftermath of the Oct. 15 earthquake.

Katie Kastner, architectural historian for the State Historical Preservation Division, said her team found a vacant lot where the church was supposed to be when they went searching for the structure last year.

Diane Weible, minister of communication for the Hawai'i conference of the United Church of Christ, said conference records show the conference and the Historic Hawai'i Foundation tried to find someone to move the church to preserve it, but when that effort failed the conference allowed the local volunteer fire department to destroy the church in a "controlled burn" in the late 1980s.

According to UCC files, the Hawai'i Conference Foundation that manages property for the conference in 1985 wrote to then-State Historic Preservation Officer Susumu Ono to request permission to dismantle the church.

The foundation said the structure had been damaged by termites and posed a potential hazard. By that time the Kohala Pilgrim Church congregation had dwindled to about a dozen individuals, and church officials were worried the building might collapse in a windstorm, Weible said.

State officials apparently referred the conference foundation to the Historic Hawai'i Foundation in an effort to salvage the building, and church records show there were at least a couple of proposals that were considered, Weible said.

When those efforts failed, the Historic Hawai'i Foundation wrote a letter thanking the conference for its efforts, and remarking that the conference had done all it could to save the building.

Weible said she could not find a letter from the state specifically authorizing the burning of the church, but said the implication of the correspondence was that the state would honor the conference's request to level the church if Historic Hawai'i Foundation could not find a way to save it.

On the state side, Kastner said the only record the State Historic Preservation Division could locate about the burning of the church was a handwritten 1989 note from Kohala resident Violet Kaiawe explaining that the church was already gone.

It is unclear why the state never investigated the loss of the church or took steps to remove the church from the list of historic places after receiving Kaiawe's 1989 letter, Kastner said.

It was the state Historic Preservation Office, the forerunner of the State Historic Preservation Division, that pressed to have the church added to the state historic register in 1983 and the federal register in 1984.

UCC officials argued against placing the church on the state Register of Historic Places in 1983, saying the designation would put pressure on the tiny congregation and the conference to carry out extensive renovations on the structure.

BUILT BY MISSIONARY

The church was built by the missionary Rev. Elias Bond, and was one of a handful of wood-frame church buildings constructed in the mid-19th century still left in Hawai'i, according to the state's application to have the site included on the federal registry.

Bond had already built the Kalahikiola Church to preach to the Hawaiian population, and in 1865 he began holding separate services at a local school for English-speaking residents, according to the state application.

"The need for a separate church became apparent, and the Kohala Foreign Church was built in Hala'ula" in 1868 and 1869 with money raised by Bond and his Kalahikiola congregation, according to state records.

In 1878, the Rev. I.W. Atherton took over as pastor of the Foreign Church. It had 14 members when it was formally organized, "most of whom were connected with development of sugar plantations in Kohala," according to the historic registry application.

The church sat vacant from 1950 to 1958, when Kohala Sugar Co. moved the building from Hala'ula to Hawi so it could be used by the local Filipino-speaking population. It was then renamed the Kohala Pilgrim Church, according to state records.

Josephine Natividad, 91, said she asked the plantation to move the building, which she knew as the "Haole Church," to the site in Hawi because it wasn't being used.

Natividad remembered how people lined the road to watch as the church was hauled into place on a parcel of land the plantation had donated for it.

The structure could hold about 200 worshippers, and Natividad said she and others worked hard to paint and restore it. She never knew how it got the name "Kohala Pilgrim Church," but she remembered playing the organ and sometimes preaching from the raised pulpit.

"It was a beautiful church," she said. "It was very dear to my heart."

'VERY CONCERNING' CASE

Melanie Chinen, administrator of the State Historic Preservation Division, said the case demonstrates the need for condition assessments of historic sites on the Big Island, and said her office is using money it has been able to save from other activities to pay an architectural firm to start those assessments.

"Those kinds of things can be very concerning, and we realized that things have been put on the register over time, but no one has really gone back to look at what's there, what is the current condition," she said.

Last month the state discovered a North Kona archaeological site called the Pua'a 2 Agricultural Fields Archaeological District had been damaged sometime after 39 archaeological features, including a suspected archaeological heaiu, were cataloged on the site in 1985.

Chinen said that case is still being reviewed, and state officials do not yet know how much of the archaeological site was damaged or when the damage was done.

That North Kona case alarmed some private archaeologists because the State Historic Preservation Division approved grading permits for the property in 2000, 2003 and 2006, apparently without noting that the national register site was on the parcel.

Both the landowners and the manager who oversaw land clearing on the property said they were never told there was a national register site there.

Paul Rosendahl, head of the archaeological consulting firm that prepared a survey for that property in 2005, said the archaeological site was gone by the time his staff prepared its report.

He acknowledged his staff was unaware there had ever been a national historic registry site on that spot, but said the incident raises questions about how the State Historic Preservation Division could have signed off on the grubbing permits.

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.