LEWISTON — The stained-glass window panels from the former St. Patrick’s Church on Bates Street are no longer available to developers or anyone, according to Jan Barrett.

The stained glass was removed and sold to someone in Japan years ago.

“They were very valuable, very high quality and the diocese decided to sell them,” she said. “I don’t know if they went into a church or into some person’s home.”

Barrett, innkeeper at the adjoining Inn at the Agora, told a group touring the decommissioned church Thursday that developer Andrew Knight has plans to do something with the windows when he opens the former church as the Agora Event Center. Until then, they are covered by wood.

The church’s stations of the cross are still on the wall, but they are being sold to a broker. The baldachin, the gold-colored canopy that covered the altar, is still in place.

“But the organ is gone, and we are not quite sure what’s going to happen in the choir loft,” Barrett said. “The possibilities are endless as to what can be done with the structure.”

It was a rare glimpse into a shuttered part of Lewiston’s past, and just the kind of thing guide Frank Carr wanted. Carr, director of business development at Portland-based HardyPond Construction, led the  group of about 10 from Thursday’s BuildMaine Conference on a walking tour of a few Lewiston spots the public may not get to see.

The tour was one of several lunchtime options for participants at the conference, centered on Lewiston’s Bates Mill. While some stayed behind at Bates Mill No. 1 to discuss urban planning strategies, others went to Simard-Payne Memorial Park to watch Lewiston fire equipment and snowplows struggle to navigate a temporarily narrowed Oxford Street.

Carr said he hoped his tour would inspire planners at Thursday’s conference as well as regular folks to get out and experience their neighborhoods.

“It’s putting your sneakers on and getting out into the community,” Carr said. “Developers and planners are focused on one area. But if you get out and talk to your community, you can understand what’s out there. There is history and there are spaces that nobody knows about.”

Carr, a Lewiston resident, said that’s how he learned about Lewiston’s secret spaces. Building owners were more than happy to invite him in and show him around, and all he had to do was knock on their doors.

Thursday’s tour started at the Bates Mill, went up to Bates Street to visit the refurbished Ironhorse Court and Royal Oak Room. It served as the Lewiston depot for the Maine Central Railroad from 1916 to 1960. It was operated as the Steel Service Center until 2008, when owner Robert Roy Jr. began working to turn it into an event center.

From there, the tour came down to the Inn at the Agora, the former rectory for St. Patrick’s Church. Owner and developer Andrew Knight is working to open the church as an event center.

Innkeeper Barrett led Carr’s group on a tour of the church and Knight’s renovation project before taking them into the moldy basement church hall and then into the adjoining crypt. That was the resting place of Monseigneur Wallace, the founding priest of the church until it was de-consecrated.

His casket was moved to Mount Hope Cemetery. Barrett said Knight plans to turn it into a macabre video-viewing space. Guests at the inn can rent the room, which will be decked out in Gothic colors and fabric facing the original headstone and a big-screen television.

“We want the headstone in place to remind people of just where they are,” Barrett said. “There’s going to be a library of classic horror movies here. Everything will be back-lit in red and there will be a full-sized coffin for people to recline on while they watch their movies.”

[email protected]