....would this be the neighborhood crack house.Very nice building, but it's in serious trouble. It was built in 1907, with additions in 1922, for the Epworth Methodist Church. After a fire in 1958, that congregation joined the flight to the suburbs.
( A Digression: It's odd. For two-thousand years, churches were place-specific. They tended the spiritual welfare of the people in their town or neighborhood. If people moved elsewhere, they ended up in another congregation, but the local parish remained in place, still tending to its flock.
Only in the late 20th century did ecclesial communities like this become movable dog and pony shows, tied to the persons ( And inflated egos ) of their members. Epworth, like a number of other congregations high-tailed it to the suburbs, abandoning the neighborhood flock. At that time, the people moving in to the Old West End were the poor. Couldn't expect the good "Christians" of Epworth to reach out to them, could you? Only later did the neighborhood become so gentrified that it outdoes most of the suburbs.
I have no respect, whatsoever, for ecclesial communities like Epworth, who abandoned two thousand years of common practice to, not "follow the people", but "follow the money." Digression closed. )
The building was bought by Mary Manse College in 1960, and rebuilt for use as a library. Since the college's unfortunate demise, in 1975, it has mostly sat vacant. The current owner of record seems to be a Michigan antique shop.
I'd noticed this building before, but my interest was piqued last week, when I walked up Parkwood and noticed this relief on the back wall. Not exactly a Methodist motif, so I'm guessing it dates to the tenure of Mary Manse.
I wasn't in any mood to stop for a closer look at the time, but the evidence of decay is hard to miss. One quick glance through the doors is enough to show the place is a complete mess.
The walls are sound, though not for long if nothing's done about the other problems.
I asked our frequent contributor Shari Stowell about the place. Her interest was piqued, as well, so she took a closer look. The credit for these photographs goes to her.
A good look through the doors shows far worse than the mess I noticed from the sidewalk. Interior walls and ceilings are collapsing, and parts of the roof are starting to fall. But something else can be seen; fast food packages and carry-out containers that can't possibly have been there for long.
It's a big building with lots of rooms, and nooks and crannies......
......and the back door's propped wide open.
9 comments:
In defense of Epworth, starting in about 1920 most of the congregation started moving out to Ottawa Hills. By the 1950s it was beginning to be more void than solid, like the neighborhood itself. With the church's people also went its benefactors, leaders, and money. A building and minister does not a church make, not in a society where you pay for electricity and heat.
Whether or not they built a new Epworth church in Ottawa Hills (as they did), that building would still be empty. They moved to a place where there was not a church, so they built one, and brought the name with them. What else were they to do? The name of the new church has nothing to do with the stagnation of the old, there was just no congregation moving into to the OWE. Don't blame the societal shift of post-WWII America on the good people of Epworth.
That sort of thinking flies in the face of history. St. Paul didn't write his letter to the peripatetic congregation somewhere between Corinth and Sparta. But, then again, St. Paul wrote to a real church, not an ecclesial community based on the half-baked notions of American suburbanites. A parish, as it should be called, should be grounded in place, as parishes always have been.
pierce --
Epworth is not defendable. There were plenty of people moving into the OWE in the 50's, some of whom I knew personally.
Evangelization is the first duty of every Christian, including Methodists. The Epworth Social Club did not accept that duty; indeed, the new residents were made to know in no uncertain terms that they were not welcome at this social club. So it was convenient for the club members to move their clubhouse to Ottawa Hills.
The word Mammon comes to my mind. Jeffrey has told us the building is still being used for worship.
Now, let us be fair. We cannot look smugly down our noses at the protestant churches that have fled to the suburbs rather than evangelize. How many inner city parishes did the Toledo diocese close in July 2005?
We have a lot of confession and penance to do.
That I would call inner-city, five, but none moved to greener pastures. When there are as many as three real churches in the space of several square blocks, I'd call it a different situation.
This sorry, crippled building, on the corner of Parkwood and Delaware, hasn't been used for worship in ??????? It was bought 20 years ago by a "Prayer Tower Church of God" but who knows how long they stayed in it. The inside is UTTERLY trashed, and if you view the aerial shots on the Areis website, you'll see all the bad spots on the roof. I've emailed the city. Let's see what happens.
I'm thinking of another big church, on the corner of Central and Collingwood, whose former owners split for the well-heeled 'burbs some 25 years ago (without benefit of insurance money that a fire would have brought them, like Epworth had). Also a church on the corner of Auburn and South Cove, which might now also be abandoned; whose first owners now have a glittery palace in Sylvania. While their former building serves as a particularly tragic example, Epworth is far from being the only example of this cutting and running for greener (or whiter, or richer) pastures rather than ministering to the changing neighborhood (I'm thinking of a certain Lutheran church, which will remain unnamed, where my mother was confirmed when it was still located at the corner of Forest and Pinewood).
The church at Central and Collingwood was fortunately bought by the congregation that is in it now and that has done a fine job of maintaining it, but for the grace of God, it could have gone the other way.
And Irene, yes, I did also think about the various central-city Catholic churches that have been closed, and even most of their central-city grade schools. That does seem, to me, to be a back-door way of doing a very similar thing. Please enlighten me if I'm wrong.
Kudos to the churches that have stayed in the neighborhoods where they are needed, and let the faces of their congregations change along with the demographics (including those who are taking in other nearby congregations that have fallen on economic hard times, rather than just letting them dissolve).
Jeffrey, I'm aware we didn't move any churches, a la the protestants. What we did was to build new churches in the suburbs, and the people moved to the new parishes.
It's no different in my diocese and my parish. We have closed inner city parishes one by one, (as opposed to wholesale as in Boston). All our flourishing parishes here are strung around the city along the outerbelt -- like a Rosary.
My parish has been losing members over the last five years. However, no one but the priest knows how to spell "evangelization". The building itself (very beautiful, you would approve) sits two short blocks from a large enclave of blacks, Viet Namese, and Cambodians. But the people at mass are all lily white.
What else can I say?
I know I shouldn't beat this to death, but I just had another thought.
Grim, foreboding old St. Anthony's -- couldn't it make a jim dandy mission? There are plenty of people living around it. But they are not going to go all the way over to Gesu. The only churches serving the considerable area around St. Anthony's are Baptist/pentacostal.
If we truly believe that "Catholic is best" (and if not, what are we doing here?) should we not have at least one mission in this large area???
I'd tend to agree that St. Anthony's would make a good mission, especially now that the disgusting Elvis-on-black-velvet decorating scheme of the previous congregation's been cleared out. Part of the problem seems to be a squeamishness about "sheep stealing". The Baptists and Pentecostals have no such qualms about spreading their filth and leading people to Hell, so I think that's a big mistake.
In fairness, though, that neighborhood is surrounded by no less than five parishes, so no one's more than a mile from one. We can't have a church on every block, though in the days of ethnic parishes ( Big mistake ) it wasn't for lack of trying.
Jeffrey,
(1) there is no need to steal any sheep from anyone. There are quite enough people with no attachment to keep us busy for a long time. Hopefully by then, we will all be one.
(2) I know there are parishes surrounding the area. Now, I have not been in these parishes for a long time, but based upon what I knew them to be in the past, I don't think the people around and northeast of St. Anthony's would be comfortable in them. No comfort -> no return.
(3) What was the mistake about ethnic parishes? I still like them. Remember, people tend to be more comfortable with what they are familiar with.
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