Jonathan Eig describes how Andrew Berlin, owner of minor league baseball team the South Bend Silver Hawks, converted a dilapidated synagogue on Coveleski Stadium grounds into a ballpark gift shop: When Berlin bought the team, he held a meeting with members of the Jewish community and proposed moving the perimeter of the stadium to enclose the … Continue reading A Serious House No Longer, Ctd
by Chris Bodenner A big roundup of entries to wrap up the thread: While it is still a serious house I suppose, I can’t resist mentioning the Jamme Masjid mosque on Brick Lane in the Spitalfields neighborhood of London. The building started life as a French Huguenot chapel in 1742, changed to Methodist in the … Continue reading A Serious House No Longer, Ctd
by Chris Bodenner A reader writes: Your thread on churches transformed into alternative spaces reminds me of a beautiful building in my hometown, Colorado Springs (arguably the most religious city in America). It was the original home of Grace and St Stephen’s Episcopal Church, which quickly outgrew the space and sold the building. After a … Continue reading A Serious House No Longer, Ctd
by Chris Bodenner To complement our post on deconsecrated churches now used for non-religious purposes, a reader sends the above photo and writes: I was interested by McClay’s response because it was so different than my own. When I was a student, I studied for a semester in London. I lived with a British family in Muswell … Continue reading A Serious House No Longer, Ctd
by Matt Sitman Spurred by a chance encounter with the former Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion, now a retail mall called Limelight Marketplace, B.D. McClay considers the fate of deconsecrated churches, wistfully concluding with these thoughts: A deconsecrated church is just a pile of stones, I guess, no different from any other. Its not … Continue reading A Serious House No Longer
“Church Going” by Philip Larkin: A serious house on serious earth it is, In whose blent air all our compulsions meet, Are recognized, and robed as destinies. And that much never can be obsolete, Since someone will forever be surprising A hunger in himself to be more serious, And gravitating with it to this ground, … Continue reading A Poem For Sunday
Last weekend we posted a quote by Paula Marantz Cohen on the meaning of the shirt collar. Dozens of readers pounced on the post, criticizing Cohen for her apparent failure to recognize the practical reasons for detachable collars. Jesse Kornbluth made related criticisms a few weeks back. The article appears to have been updated. It now reads (the bolded part is new):
