SIOUX FALLS, SD (KELO) — A century-old chapel in the heart of Sioux Falls has been posing for its close-up.

A drone, equipped with remote sensing equipment, has performed a flyover of the Glidden Memorial Chapel, located in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

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The technology, called LiDAR, uses light and radar to map out every inch of the building, inside and out. It’s the first phase of what will be an extensive makeover of the historic building.

The chapel also shares a technological tie to the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.

This is a virtual blueprint of the 101-year-old Glidden Memorial Chapel.

“It gives you dimensions, it gives you space, you can ask the machine to take you upstairs or onto the next side to go 50-feet above and see what it’s like from that view,” Doug Pederson of Pederson Contracting Corporation said.

This 3-D imaging of the chapel contains millions of points that provide architects with precise 3-D measurements of the building.

“4.947 feet from the bottom of that stone to the grade where the stone meets to the underside of that sandstone,” Schemmer Associates Senior Architect Robin Miller said.

There’s a learning curve to this new technology, behind every corner and every wall.

“The first time we used this technology, we were trying to show-off how good we were at it. And one of our operators got lost in the middle of a wall and couldn’t figure out how to get out,” Miller said.

Mount Pleasant Cemetery will use the data collected to begin a major restoration of the chapel. Moisture through the decades has weakened the chapel’s floor to the extent that no one is allowed inside. The floor will eventually have to be replaced, as part of upgrades to this longtime landmark.

“When people ask me where’s Mount Pleasant, I say, well, it’s the chapel on 12th Street. Everybody knows this chapel. They didn’t know what was Mount Pleasant, but they know the chapel,” Mount Pleasant Cemetery Association President Fred Gage said.

The imaging will be a big time-saver in preparing the chapel for renovations.

“If you think about it, instead of having two guys in there with a tape measure moving a ladder around for eight hours, we came in with a drone for a couple hours and got better measurements than we would have ever got,” Mount Pleasant Cemetery Manager Matt Gage said.

A hand-held camera took images of the chapel’s interior, including the basement, where bodies used to be stored.

“And you can see right here was the opening, so they could have a casket down below and raise it into the opening of the floor above,” Miller said.

Measurements provided by the imaging will also provide key data for a planned expansion of the chapel.

“If we put on an addition, for example, we want to make sure it’s compatible with the building. We don’t want to have it necessarily compete with the building, because you can’t duplicate this. But you can make it something compatible and make it more functional,” Pederson said.

This type of laser scanning was used to create a virtual model of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris after it was heavily damaged by fire in 2019.

“I saw a thing actually on CBS This Morning about how they had used LiDAR after the fire to find all the measurements of the things that were unsafe and they couldn’t get to and all that stuff, and then they were able to re-create places that things were missing so they could bring it back to what it was,” Matt Gage said.

The chapel is on the National Historic Register, so any upgrades will have to maintain its historical significance.

“As we refurbish this building and bring it to usable use, there are quite a few code conditions that were not in place at the time the building was constructed,” Miller said.

With much of the preliminary, technical work now wrapping up, the actual refurbishing of the chapel can’t get underway until the cemetery collects more donations from the public.

“And we’ve got to go step-by-step and basically we have to fund the project as we proceed, so that’s very important,” Pederson said.

Actual construction could still be months away, depending on how much money the cemetery raises. An ambitious project to preserve Sioux Falls’ past, while remaining laser-focused on the future.

“This building was probably built by people who were born in the 1800s. And what they accomplished is nothing short of amazing and it amazes us to this day,” Pederson said.

The cemetery hopes to hold not only funerals, but weddings in the chapel, once it’s fully restored.

Matt Gage says he’s also fielded questions from churches that want to hold Sunday services there.

If you’d like to donate to the project, click here