Follow-Up: Presbyterian Church in Parnassus
In my last entry, I blogged about the Logans Ferry Presbyterian Church in Parnassus, after reading an article online about it in the Tribune-Review / Valley News Dispatch. I am going to write a little bit more about it now because I got to tour it last Saturday.
Jonathan subscribes to an email list for the New Kensington Camera Club, and he noted that they had a photo walk planned that morning inside the church. He wanted to go but had a prior commitment. Since I feel a connection to the building that I will explain below, I went. I really appreciate the hospitality of Pastor Robert Henry in opening the church to us that morning, and I also want to thank Don Henderson and the rest of the Camera Club for arranging the tour.
As I mentioned in my prior post, our own Victorian house in Parnassus was built shortly after this church was built, and Jonathan and I found the burial plot for the original owners of our house in the cemetery next to this church. The cemetery actually belongs to The United Presbyterian Church of New Kensington, which originally built this landmark and later moved (to a new church that is two blocks from our house), and thus sold their old church to the parish from Logans Ferry. Therefore, from what I understand, the original family that owned our house for several decades attended church in this building.
After we walked around the nave taking pictures, one of the club members asked the pastor if he could tour the basement. I followed him and several others downstairs because I was curious. However, I took no photos of it because it looked a lot like my own basement that was built around the same time. Both basements are constructed of loose stone and supported by a hand-hewn wooden beams. (The church’s basement floor is dirt and stone. Unfortunately, ours is not. At one point in time between the original owners’ residence in the house and our own, somebody poured a concrete floor in our basement. Now it collects water every time it rains.)
Finally, before I left that morning, I went to visit the original family who now share their large comfortable house with me and Jonathan. Here is the church from the vantage point of their resting place.
