HUNTINGTON — The 136-year-old former St. Thomas Roman Catholic Church on East Main Street was sold at auction Thursday for $75,000 to Gerald Farrelly of Westfield, representing the Farrelly Family Realty Trust.

Mark Dupont, spokesman for the Springfield Diocese, said the diocese was pleased with the outcome of the auction. This is the first time that the Springfield Diocese has auctioned off one of its churches.

“The success of this auction increases the likelihood that we may do this again with some of our other properties,” Dupont said.

Held on the front lawn of the church, roughly 18 people attended the auction, though according to auctioneer Corey Fisher, vice president at auctioneers Aaron Posnik & Co. of West Springfield, six bidders had come forward, each putting down a refundable $5,000 deposit that enabled them to participate in the auction.

The event went quickly, taking about five minutes to complete. The lowest bid came in at $30,000 but steadily climbed to the final offer of $75,000.

Farrelly stood at the very back of the crowd and swiftly countered other offers as they came up. He declined to say what his intentions were for the building and left soon after the close of the auction.

The Springfield Diocese had closed the church in 2010 and consolidated the parish of St. Thomas with St. John Mission in Chester and Our Lady of the Rosary Parish in Russell, where all three now make up one parish.

Standing on one-third of an acre in the center of town, the property is assessed at $201,400. It is handicapped-accessible, approximately 3,720 square feet, zoned for business, and had been on sale through Colebrook Realty for $189,000.

Lori and David Baillargeon of Huntington said they had previously made an offer to purchase the church along with an accompanying 15 acres of woods that were also being sold by the diocese at the time.

“We offered $175,000 but they turned it down,” Lori Baillargeon said before the auction started. “If we get this today, we would like to turn it into a community center that would be open to everyone.”

Another Huntington couple who bid on the property was Mike and Mimi Ross, who run the Eden Project, a spiritually based community center in Huntington. Mimi Ross said they, too, had plans to turn the church into a community center if they had the winning bid.

Many people who attended the auction were not bidding on the church, but were interested to see what the future might hold for this historic church.

Built in 1881, the church sits in a historic district that was established in 2012.

“This is a big deal in Huntington,” Bill McVeigh of the Huntington Historical Society, said.

McVeigh said the church was built at a time when the railroad was being built and, business at logging camps and local mills was booming. The labor for these industries was supplied by Irish, Italian and French Canadians who were brought to town, many of them Catholic.

“It was those people who got together to put up this church,” McVeigh said. “Many of those stained glass windows have the names of town fathers and some of the early people that donated money so the church could be built.”

McVeigh said the Historical Society is interested in meeting with the new owners at some point down the road.

Huntington resident Gary Wallace said he had once been a parishioner at the church, and he and his wife had been married there 40 years ago.

“It is sad,” he said. “But I guess it has to be done.”

As part of the sale, the diocese placed a deed restriction on the church, which Fisher read prior to the bidding.

It stated that: “In no event shall the premise be put to any use that is inconsistent with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church as determined in the sole discretion of the Roman Catholic bishop of Springfield.”

“I don’t think that there is a clear reason why this church did not sell,” Dupont said, adding that the diocese has sold a number of other churches in a variety of communities that were larger and older than St. Thomas.

As for other closed churches going up for auction, Dupont said a property would have to be on the market for five years or more before the diocese would consider putting it up for auction.

He said that St. Mary’s Church on Elm Street in Northampton is not in the running at present because the diocese has only recently put that property up for sale.

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