You'll be happy to know the Brown Memorial AME Church is in a new building and is no longer operating here. It's tough to do church services without sunlight streaming through the windows.I tooled around the church's website and learned a bit of history of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. I suggest you read it but in case you don't, in a nutshell the AME Church was founded in 1787. It was, and still is, an African American Methodist Church. Of course it's not that simple.
The website is going to be nice but it's not finished yet. I hope they'll add information about the Pasadena parish. And I'm curious to know more about this building. I don't know if the church still owns it or not. It's been boarded up for many months now, and I wonder if the neighborhood will find a use for it. Right now it's a hulking thing just sitting on Orange Grove Blvd. near the corner of Fair Oaks, not too far from some pretty fancy real estate like the Gamble House and the Fenyes Mansion. With plenty of free parking!
17 comments:
INteresting post today, Petrea. The church really looks sad with boarded up windows!
I know you understand my circumstances, so I hope you'll forgive me when I say the first thing that popped into my head was a mechanical bull.
This church building was converted from a residence many years ago. The entire block from Orange Grove to the next street North is slated for a development project. The City purchased this land for about 12 million dollars. Commercial and residential, alas, mo green space.
Correction: NO Green Space
Pascal Jim, thanks for the info! Just the kind of thing I was googling for and unable to find. Do you have an inside track or did I just miss it? (It wouldn't be the first time.) Mind if I update the post and quote you?
I think a good use for the building would be a night spot with mechanical bull rides, but perhaps that's not what the city has in mind.
I think I missed out on the insider joke. I sent the picture to an architect and he reiterated some of what PJ said (Desert George) "The curved cross vestibule was added over the top at some point to a
simple ridge-roofed structure. My guess is it was something else before a church. It has charm, sorta, but I'm not blown away by it."
I guess neither is the city of Pasadena. I can smell the wrecking ball. More mixed use development (again). Good history link Petrea, thanks.
I don't think there's an inside joke here, PA. Nor do I think the building's particularly special in and of itself. I wouldn't head up any committees to save it. My interest is in its weirdness, I suppose. That and the fact that it's been sitting there so long, vulnerable to vandalism and graffiti, none of which it has suffered.
Oooo! Oooo! P! Excellent thought you have there. Check out what they did in SoHo, NYC on Alexa's blog!
Oh I do like this interesting building. And I love the blue California sky with the mountains in the distance. I feel oh so far away. The church I went into today was really old.
Churches always look sad when they're abandoned. I hope that its congregation found a nice place to meet!
I quote what I just posted on yesterday's Paris DP:
Okay, P. You see the examples of HTML that are allowed, listed right under the comment composition box? One of them is pointy brackets around a letter i. Put that pointy bracketed i at the beginning of the text you want in italics. Then at the end of the text, put another one, but insert a forward slash after the first point and before the i. The phrase should come out in italics. You do the same thing with the letter b when you want bold text. The letter a is something called an anchor, and you are already using it to make links, smarty pants.
See Pascal Jim's comments, Elaine. I don't think we're getting a pony rides. And see PDP for my comments on the html lesson, merci! I've been copying and pasting some code and I don't really know what I'm doing.
Katie's checking in from Paris! She pre-posted fun stuff at her blog so check it out.
From the looks of the photos on their website they found a nice place, Christie.
You italicize beautifully, Petrea.
As for the art in SoHo, I was under the impression it was temporary, and all of it would be torn down when the new project began. (But I may not been careful in my reading.) This building is soooo blank, and white, and with odd surfaces, that an art event on it would be cool! Then everybody take pictures, and down it comes!
Do you know the children's hand game, "This is the church and this is the steeple. Open the door and here are the people."
When I form my hands into the church and steeple part, it looks just like this church .
This is some ugly architecture.
Thanks Elaine. I think you're right about the post on Alexa's blog about the Soho art. It would be fun to do something like that here. Burningman in north Pasadena! Legally, of course.
Susan, your hands are much prettier than that!
Northwest Pas has some lovely haunts. The people I meet there are as fine as anywhere else.
Free parking is the thing! Oh and I love your Zazzle collection Petrea!
Thank you, Lynn! I love your new pic.
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