I’m really bummed about this; a while back a buddy of mine, who’s family is part of the Chester Historical Society, mentioned that the society took ownership of a very old and historic Presbyterian church in Chester. As such, we went to the church to help them start to clean it up as well as look around and get a bunch of pictures of the building, noting issues that would need to be addressed and so on.
4 years later, on May 27th 2020, the church burned to the ground.
(Just to note; sadly since I started writing this post, the country and seemingly the world has turned for the worse, with the riots and protests going on. To be clear, this happened just before the riots started.)
What really gets to me was how excited the society was for saving the church, literally days away from bulldozers, and were brainstorming on how to bring it back to life in some way in the neighborhood, such as a community center, theater, or some other use. As part of the cleanup, they were able to find and recover a number of old photos and historical documents laying about, including a large photo showing a Bible Study camp from 1929.
Exploring the building you can tell there was a ton of history there, down to the “Men Only” signs still hanging on the sacristy doors. The building was basically a school and church combined, with a large atrium space in between the two. Very interesting mix of architectures, with some parts more modern and other areas not so much.
The church portion of the building was super interesting, with the original pipe organ still in place, most of the roof still good with amazing wood framing, the pews still in place, and while damaged, the stained glass windows were still there, ironically with Jesus’ portion of one window completely untouched.
The more I think about it, the more I think this would have made an awesome community theater. Alas, there are larger problems in the world right now.
The photos below were taken by me…unfortunately I had a lot of problems taking photos that day, as I was trying to use an external flash, and didn’t realize the problems an older flash brings to a modern DSLR.
Please comment below to share a memory or thought about this place.