GREENFIELD — With plans to have the former Zion Korean Church, now owned by Franklin County’s YMCA, moved back to its hometown of Barre, contractors are working to meticulously dismantle the historic building piece by piece.

Philip Stevens, owner of Carter & Stevens Farm LLC in Barre, is overseeing the crew that is taking the 463 Main St. church apart. The move to his family farm and brewery, called Stone Cow Brewery, in Barre marks the Stevens’ 11th time relocating a building.

“It’s all hand work, no machines. Pretty much it’s all got to get disassembled, all the nails pulled,” Stevens explained. “Everything has to be marked, all the beams. It’s not the white siding that you’re looking at, that gets trashed. It’s the structural beams and all the hand-hewn beams that are all pegged, that we save to put up.”

An anonymous donor helped the YMCA acquire the former Zion Korean Church last spring, and the organization was tasked with either demolishing the structure to make room for program space or renovating the building to bring it up to code. Facing demolition, the Stevens family offered to dismantle and move the church back to Barre, where it stood prior to moving to Greenfield in 1936.

Stevens said this week that he hopes to finish dismantling the structure by May, but he noted the church’s panels, which had been reassembled using modern nails in 1936, have been difficult to pull off.

“When it got moved, it was around 1940, so it’s actually coming apart really, really hard, because it was nailed recently,” Stevens said. “It’s not the handmade nails that I am used to on an old structure.”

After the YMCA signed a contract with Western Mass Demolition Corporation in August to tear down the 182-year-old church, the Historical Commission designated the site a “preferably preserved significant building” on Jan. 2, kicking off a six-month demolition delay.

The designation came as Franklin County’s YMCA announced its plans to either relocate or demolish the church to expand its playground and create a third preschool classroom. According to Grady Vigneau, CEO of Franklin County’s YMCA, the church must be rebuilt in accordance with its original design.

“Our entire organization, from our board, to myself as CEO, to our staff, is just really pleased and excited that the church is going to be safe — the church is going to be reconstructed in its original town. And we’re all so excited, and that’s from a historical perspective and from a community perspective,” Vigneau said in February. “This has been a long process with the city, but I am very, very pleased and very proud of the way the city and the community were able to work together and come to an optimal solution to a very difficult situation.”

The church was built as the Coldbrook Springs Baptist Church in Barre in the 1840s and sits in the East Main/High Street Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places. The Greenfield Christian Scientist congregation bought the Greek revival-style church and moved it to Greenfield.

Although a June 9, 1953, Greenfield Recorder article stated that the church hosted abolitionist speakers such as William Lloyd Garrison and was moved to Greenfield from Barre during the construction of the Quabbin Reservoir, research conducted by Barre Historical Commission Chair Lucy Allen could not confirm the church’s ties to the abolitionist movement. She also said the church was moved from Barre as part of the Ware River Diversion Project.

Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at acammalleri@recorder.com or 413-930-4429.